


Twin Suns

by MiraMeraki



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Abuse of Authority, Class Differences, Consent Issues, Established Relationship, F/M, Gallifreyan Culture (Doctor Who), Implied/Referenced Suicide, Lack of Communication, One-Sided Attraction, One-sided Thasmin, Post-Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, Pregnancy, Rassilon (Doctor Who) is a Dick, Regeneration (Doctor Who), Time Lord Biology (Doctor Who), Time Lord Physiology (Doctor Who), Time Lord Reproduction (Doctor Who), Time Lord Telepathy (Doctor Who), Time Lords and Ladies (Doctor Who), Unhealthy Relationships, Unplanned Pregnancy, Whump, a truly astonishing lack of communication, darkish 13, more whump in later chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:42:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 59,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23181154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiraMeraki/pseuds/MiraMeraki
Summary: "Maybe every civilization is built on a lie."When the Master asks for the Doctor's help in terraforming Gallifrey, peaceful fields of red grass aren't the only things that return. For Time Lords, the past is never far behind, bringing with it a terrible secret that threatens to tear apart Team TARDIS forever.[On Hiatus: Returning in early March]
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 68
Kudos: 197





	1. 2.47

**Author's Note:**

> So, welcome to day one of my 14 day self-quarantine! This is honestly going to be my biggest coping mechanism in dealing with coronavirus anxiety, so I guess we'll see how coherent my writing is once the cabin fever settles in. Right now, I'm thinking this will take 8 to 10 chapters, and hopefully I can get it done over the course of the next two weeks. :D

She’s not surprised when she hears from him again.

By this point, she’s accepted the fact that he’s another kind of immortal: while her cells fizzle with infinite chances at life, he never runs out of ways to outsmart death. The thought of him forever devising new ways to destroy what she holds most dear should terrify her, but as she dangles her legs outside the TARDIS, parked outside a swirling gold and purple nebula, she can’t help but feel at ease. She loves humans, even when they drive her mad with their selfishness and short-sightedness, but they come and go and leave her with eternity. Forever stretches before her like a deep, dark well, but at least she knows that if she drowns in it, she won't be drowning alone.

No, it’s the way he contacts her that makes her scramble to her feet, her blood running cold and her heart burning with, of all things, _hope._

“Doc?” Graham asks when he sees her suddenly freeze at the console. “What’s...?”

The Doctor lifts a hand, and the stern concentration in her eyes kills the rest of his sentence. Yaz and Ryan glance up from a video on Ryan’s phone with identical worried frowns, and then the only things moving in the silent TARDIS are the Doctor’s eyes, darting back and forth frantically, scanning the floor with the same urgency she uses to scan her mind.

After a few seconds of crushing silence, she’s sure she imagined it, but then it’s there again: the faintest whisper in the back of her head, like a memory so faint that it turns into a dream.

 _2.47_ , says the voice. _His_ voice.

The Doctor takes a deep, relieved breath, and it’s like a video switching from pause to fast forward. She morphs into a flurry of action, haphazardly pushing buttons and flipping switches as she races around the console, her sky grey coat flapping so fast that it’s a miracle it doesn’t trip her up. The TARDIS emits a quick series of chirps and whistles, to which the Doctor replies, “Get ready, old girl.”

The three humans grab onto a crystal column for support as the TARDIS enters turbulence. “Where are we going, Doctor?” shouts Yaz from the other side of the control room.

But when the Doctor flings open the doors, the familiar burnt sky is a sufficient answer. The humans share a look before sprinting after her, already a blue and yellow speck in the distance. The Doctor’s boots keep slipping, unable to find traction in the dusty topsoil, but she doesn’t pause until she finally reaches the Master, sitting on a rocky outcropping overlooking the broken Capitol.

She skids to a halt beside him. He glances up at her, not a trace of surprise on his face, before wordlessly turning back to the flaming carnage.

He looks so calm, so pensive, and for a moment, the Doctor doesn’t know what to say. “Two point four seven,” she says when she finds her voice. “Two point four seven billion.”

The Master keeps on staring into the distant flames.

Is it relief in her voice, or desperation? “The children. You counted the children.” 

“Yes,” he answers plainly, as if she had told him about the weather. She searches his face for any sign of grief or remorse, but she can’t find any. “Yes, I did.”

“How long have you been here?”

His bloodshot eyes flicker with annoyance. “Days, weeks, months? Does it matter, Doctor?”

“Of course it does,” she says breathlessly, wishing he would look at her. He’s so young in this body, they both are, but when he’s hunched over like this, elbows resting on his thighs and fingers threaded together to support his chin, she can see every century he’s lived. 

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it,” he whispers, still entranced. “The shape of the smoke, twisting and rising into the air, until suddenly it disappears.” He sighs, and there’s a weariness to it that the Doctor knows all too well. “You tried to make me hear the music of the universe, Doctor, but sometimes I wonder if this is the only beauty the universe can offer me.”

“Would you do it again?” asks the Doctor, daring to be hopeful even after centuries of the same old game. “Are they worth it, the shapes in the smoke?”

The Master waits a long time before answering. “They deserved it, you know. The Time Lords. I don’t regret what I did.”

“But would you do it again?” the Doctor insists.

Another eternity of silence, at which point Yaz, Graham, and Ryan finally reach the outcropping. Graham grips his knees as he stoops over to catch his breath, while Ryan and Yaz look on nervously, unsure if they should intervene. It feels like they’ve intruded on a moment of intimacy, as the Doctor kneels down next to the Master, forcing him to see the worry and tension in her face. 

“I don’t know,” he admits. “I genuinely don’t know.”

The Doctor is crestfallen but doesn’t relent. “Then why count? Why count all those children you killed?”

She places a hand on his shoulder, and though he flinches like it burns, he doesn’t pull away. “I dreamt of my daughter,” he says quietly. “All those little bodies… I needed to make sure none of them were her.”

“So that’s still all you care about? Your own happiness? Some of those children were daughters too, even if they weren’t yours.” The faces of the Doctor’s own children flash in her mind, faces she couldn’t bear to think of for centuries, until she feels the Master’s hand brush against her cheek and realizes she’s been silently crying.

“I know,” he tells her, his deep brown eyes boring into hers. “I’ve never claimed to be a good man, so that’s why I called out to you.” His gaze falls to the parched orange earth, filled with spider cracks and eroded pebbles. “I… I want to bring it back.”

“What do you mean?” she demands, pulling away from the Master’s touch as a sudden rush of anger rushes through her. “Everyone’s _dead_ ,” she hisses, “because of _you._ You killed them, the ground we’re sitting on has been drenched in their blood, and now you want to bring it back? How _dare_ you suggest something like that?” 

The Master keeps his face neutral; he had been expecting that sort of reaction, after all. “Not the Gallifreyans,” he clarifies. “I know I can never bring them back, even if I wanted. But when I look at the fires burning all around us, and I think back to the red fields of grass, the silver trees, the shining mountains… those things were beautiful, too. I understand that now. I want to bring _Gallifrey_ back, Doctor.”

Her fist clenches around a loose clump of dirt. “Why? What would be the point?”

The Master shrugs. “Gallifrey was never home for either of us. But at least we could have somewhere to come back to. Somewhere we could call home and pretend like it was true.”

“How could we even do it?” asks the Doctor, the question slipping out before she’s had time to ponder it herself. “You’ve wiped out all organic life on the planet.”

“Other orphan planets have been terraformed before,” he reasons as he turns his imploring brown eyes on her. “Please, Doctor, I know you miss it, too. If it doesn’t work out then it doesn’t work out. But there’s no harm in trying, right?”

The Doctor scoffs. “Like you’ve ever cared about doing harm.” But the hope in his eyes is infectious, and after a few moments her frown softens into something like a smile, which is all the confirmation the Master needs.

“Wait, so what’s going on?” Ryan asks as the Time Lords get to their feet. “Are you really gonna help him, Doctor, after everything he’s done?”

The Master scowls at the sight of the three humans, but then his face instantly betrays his anxiety as he turns to the Doctor to gauge her reaction.

“Yes, I am,” the Doctor says firmly. “I know he’s done terrible things, and you don’t have to stay here, but he’s a Time Lord and this is my home planet, so I have to at least try. Even if that is without you all,” she adds, quieter.

Graham crosses his arms at the suggestion of bringing them home. “And leave you by yourself with him? Don’t be daft.”

Ryan nods in agreement, but Yaz remains silent, her brow furrowed in deep thought. “Give me one reason why we should trust him,” she finally asks the Doctor. “One reason why we should give him a second chance.”

A barn in the desert flashes in the Doctor’s memory, alongside a golden-haired woman, a big red button, and an unspeakable choice.

“Because a long time ago, I needed one, too.”


	2. Culminating Acts

It takes them a few weeks to start properly terraforming Gallifrey, but even longer for the three companions to start letting their guard down around the Master. Though he has a TARDIS of his own, he’s essentially moved in with the Doctor, which - despite the Doctor’s reassurances that yes, they’re perfectly safe under her watch, and no, the homicidal glint in his eyes is always there - leads to several paranoid nights of locked doors and sharp objects under pillows. 

However, his presence on board the TARDIS also sheds some light on the Doctor and her enigmatic past. Most of the time, the two Time Lords are consumed by the mission to revive their home planet, and any conversation is kept to technical terms that fly over the humans' heads. And yet, be it a passing jab about failing her flying test at the Academy or the mention of a name - so _many_ names, they discover - that sends her into a melancholy silence, the companions come to understand that the Doctor carries within her lifetimes of joy and pain beyond their comprehension, and that the Master has somehow been a witness to it all.

Thankfully, the Master mostly chooses to ignore the presence of the three humans, to the point where they genuinely don’t know if he pretends to forget their names or just never bothered to learn them at all. But while the Master focuses on the momentous task at hand, the members of Team TARDIS, in a bid to understand this genocidal maniac who seems to run on nothing but sarcasm and pitch-black coffee, focus all their attention on him.

Or rather, him and the Doctor.

And then, slowly but surely, each of them has a moment in which the Master earns their trust. Not by any Doctor-y act of kindness or empathy intended to change the world, but in a culminating series of tiny acts that come to change _her_.

For Graham, that moment comes as they trek silently through the ruined Capitol, death weighing heavily in the air. The Doctor leads them through a crumbling pavilion, and he can see her stare resolutely ahead, as if she doesn’t dare to look around at the carnage for fear of spotting a familiar face. The Master walks alongside her, equally somber, but as they pass through an archway decorated with Time Lord statues, he points up at one and mutters something that Graham’s too far away to hear. But the Doctor turns to him and snorts, and Graham watches as layers of worry and anxiety suddenly melt away, leaving a smile that he hasn’t seen from her in months. From then on, the Doctor walks a little closer to the Master, and Graham looks on in quiet approval.

For Ryan, it’s while they’re working on some tower-like contraption meant to clear away the clouds of smog. There are cables strewn all around the base, and as the Doctor races past him with a box of junk parts in her arms, one of the cables catches around her ankle. Just as she’s about to fall over, the Master looks up from a blueprint and grabs her by the hips to steady her. They stay like that for several seconds, her back pressed against his chest, before the Master snaps at her to be more careful and heads back to work, leaving the Doctor staring after him with a faint blush on her face and a strange look in her eyes.

Yaz’s moment comes more than two weeks later, during a visit to Linphea, a planet-wide plant conservatory that services over half the galaxy. The Master insists they’re not stealing, as the flora rightfully belong on Gallifrey, but the Doctor requests that they sneak in by night so that they have time to take snippets of the plants and leave the rest. Yaz goes to deliver a cutting of a silverwood tree to the Doctor, but stops at the doorway when she sees both Time Lords huddled in front of a yellow, six-petaled flower. The only sources of light are dim orange heating lamps and scrolling neon signs displaying toxicity warnings, but she can still see the sad, faraway looks in both their eyes. Then the Doctor turns to the Master, and though they don’t exchange words, Yaz figures by the intensity of the Doctor’s gaze that they’re somehow communicating anyway. Yaz’s eyes widen as the Master steps toward her, and she debates whether or not to come to the Doctor’s aid, but then he takes her in his arms and lets her lay her head on his shoulder. After a minute or so, the Doctor closes her eyes, and it’s the first time Yaz can recall ever seeing the Doctor look at peace.

The yellow flower they were standing next to is called the Flower of Remembrance, Yaz learns later, when they plant it over a mass grave of fallen Gallifreyans. Roughly three miles outside the Capitol, there’s a dried-up riverbed, and for one terrible, terrible week, they lay body after battered body to rest before filling the whole riverbed with dirt. 

Their work is horribly silent, even after the bodies are hidden from view and they begin planting hundreds of Flowers of Remembrance on top, to represent just a fraction of those who now lie asleep beneath them. Yaz, whose eyes are inflamed after a week of crying, glances over at the Doctor. She hasn’t seen the Doctor cry once throughout the whole affair, her features instead hardened like they’ve been welded in fire. It hurts to watch how angry yet methodical the Doctor is, as she yanks a flower from a tray and thrusts it into a hole in the ground, not even bothering to pack it into the soil before mechanically grabbing another.

Hours pass, and Gallifrey’s second sun burns high in the sky when the Doctor starts to sing. The three humans pause their work, and even the Master looks up, face wracked with pain and, if one’s feeling recklessly optimistic, real honest grief. It must be in Old High Gallifreyan, the one language the TARDIS won’t translate, the companions remember the Doctor telling them, but this is the first time they’ve ever heard it aloud. They’re not even sure how one would go about translating it, those irreplicable sounds that reverberate inside their minds and in their very bones. The Doctor looks so small, crouched in the dirt with red dust coating every exposed patch of skin, but the music emanating from her sounds so _big_ , too big for any one person to produce: it sounds like a raging wave uselessly hitting a cliff face, like a meteor burning a crater into the earth, like a million pattering footsteps chasing after something lost.

It sounds like the universe crying.

The Master doesn’t sing with her, but he takes up the chant when her voice starts to crack and then fades out when she’s ready to begin again, thus creating an unbroken melody that carries them into dusk. At which point the Doctor stands, brushes the dirt off her pants, and turns her hollow eyes on the Master.

“I don’t know how you live with yourself,” she declares hoarsely before she stalks off in the direction of the Citadel.

The three companions watch her leave, then turn to the Master who looks just as dumbfounded. “Better go after her, son,” says Graham, patting him on the shoulder as though this isn’t the same person who introduced himself by blowing up a plane.

The Master’s nose wrinkles in disgust at Graham’s touch, but he sighs and follows her anyway. He finds her leaning against the side of her TARDIS, parked in a field of red grass billowing in the wind. She’s staring at the mountain range in the distance, beyond which the Great Houses lie in ruins, and the Master wonders if she’s thinking of home. 

“This is pointless,” she tells him as he draws nearer. “No matter what we do, they’re never coming back.”

The Master raises an eyebrow at her. “Were you expecting them to?” he asks coldly.

“Maybe a little,” she confesses, pulling her coat tighter around herself despite the warm summer wind. “Always been too hopeful for my own good. Now it’s just even more obvious that they’re all gone.” 

The Master pauses to consider his words carefully. “I wanted to do this for us, not for them.” 

The Doctor scoffs. “Like _that’s_ anything new.”

“It was your choice to help me.”

“I know!” she shouts, rounding on him with dark eyes that shoot daggers into both his hearts. “But now, I… _gods_ , I feel like your _accomplice_. Like we’ve just buried the evidence. It’s disgusting.”

“Shall we dig them up again?” he asks with an impatient sigh. “It’s not all that different from what you did, Doctor,” he adds softly. “Just because you didn’t leave any bodies behind doesn’t make it better.”

She glares at him but doesn’t argue; he knows she can’t. 

“I didn’t want to leave Gallifrey looking like a battlefield,” he murmurs. “I thought this would make things right.”

The Doctor’s gaze softens. “So that really _is_ all you want to do,” she whispers in disbelief. 

“Why?” the Master demands as he folds his arms. “Did you think this was just another trap?”

“Honestly? Yes.”

“Then why go along with it?”

The Doctor takes a step toward him, and the dying light of Gallifrey’s setting suns turn her eyes into a kaleidoscope of green, grey, and gold. 

“Because for some god-awful reason, I never seem to mind so long as it’s you.”

Then she lunges at him, and for a second the Master thinks her hands are aiming for his throat, but then she wraps her arms around his neck and he realizes she’s crying. “You killed them,” she accuses him, choking out the words between sobs that wrack her body. “Just when I thought I saved them, you killed them.”

The Master holds her as he stares at the broken dome of the Citadel. “I know.”

“I can’t forgive you for that,” she says, even as she clings to him tighter.

“I know.”

“You always know exactly how to hurt me,” she cries, burying her face in his chest. “You used to be my husband, you stood outside the Citadel and promised you’d protect me, but all you ever do is _hurt_ me.”

“We’re both quite good at that by this point, dear,” he replies as he runs a hand through her hair. 

The Doctor lifts her head and gazes up at him through her wet eyelashes. “We’re the only ones left, again. What are we going to do?”

The Master’s answer slips from his mouth before he’s even had the chance to consider it. In a way, it’s the same answer he’s wanted to give her for centuries. “Whatever you want, Doctor.”

“I don’t want us to hurt each other anymore,” the Doctor pleads with him, “even though it’s what we’re best at. Even though I can’t forgive you, even though I can’t stand you sometimes, I just need the games to stop, Master. I… I just can’t bear to be alone again. I need you here with me.”

He nods, a smirk tugging at his lips. “I think that can be arranged.”

When the Master kisses her, at first it feels like asking for permission. It’s been ages since they’ve kissed, after all, and never in these bodies. But when the Doctor responds with an impatient moan that reverberates through their psychic connection, he takes the hint and lowers her to the ground until he has her pinned against the newly terraformed soil. Her hair fans out beneath her, golden threads peeking in and out of the red grass, and it reminds him so much of their childhood trysts that the thought of ever causing her pain seems unthinkable to him. 

_My Doctor,_ he murmurs reverently at the sight of her, flushed and breathless beneath him. So beautiful, in all her forms, in times of joy and times of sorrow, yet never more beautiful than now. 

They don’t think in words very much after that. He whispers her name in her mind and she whispers his, and she tells him what she needs, even though it’s painstakingly obvious. A cool nighttime wind blows through the field, and even though her core is already burning, she basks in the warmth of the Master’s body surrounding her. 

The Doctor tilts her head back and starts tracing constellations that were once so familiar to her half an eternity ago. She’s been living on Gallifrey for eight weeks now, she realizes, but as the Master’s hands start tracing down her neck, collarbones, stomach, and even lower, tonight is the first night that’s felt like home. 

* * *

“So _when_ exactly were you planning to tell us you two are married?”

“ _Were_ married, technically,” the Doctor corrects Yaz as they follow the Master through the winding passages of the Citadel. “Time Lords are supposed to renew their vows after one or both of them regenerates in order for it to be binding, but we never did.”

“Guess ‘death do us part’ is a bit flexible for you lot,” Graham reasons, walking a few paces behind with Ryan.

“Was he.... different, back then?” asks Yaz. “You know, less psychotic and murderous?”

Both Time Lords laugh heartily at that. “No, Yaz,” says the Doctor with a gentle smile. “He’s just the same as always.”

Yaz narrows her eyes. “Doctor, he tried to kill us.”

The Doctor’s smile falters, and she turns her face away. “I know,” she murmurs. “I’m so sorry, Yaz.”

“But your _husband_ isn’t.”

Ryan places a hand on Yaz’s shoulder. “Hey, ease up a little. It’s not her fault.” 

Ryan then turns to the Doctor, who still has her eyes trained on the ground. “So, if you two aren’t technically married anymore, then why are we looking for your marriage certificate thing?”

“A suns dial,” she clarifies. “And even if it’s inactive, we’d still like to have it. It holds memories for both of us - literally.” She looks up at the Master, standing at a forked path. “Are you sure this is the right way? We should have hit the Archives by now.”

“Most of the corridors to the east wing are caved in,” he answers. “We’ve got to go the long way round.” Then, seemingly at random, he sets off down the left path, the Doctor and her companions following close behind.

“Honestly, did you bother to leave any part of the Citadel besides the Matrix intact?” she asks.

“The Panopticon’s still fine, for the most part. The central TARDIS hub too, but that’s about it. The Looming Chambers are all bombed out--”

“What’s looming?” Ryan whispers loudly enough for the two Time Lords to hear.

“Time Lord production pods, basically,” the Doctor explains, her voice way too chipper given the subject matter. “Time Lords generally were never keen on the birds and the bees, so they created a way to weave together genetic material in order to create new Time Lords asexually.”

The three humans stare dumbfoundedly. “Well, I can see why you ran away, Doc,” Graham remarks, chuckling nervously. “Everything about your people sounds like it’s straight from a sci-fi horror film.”

“Great timing, granddad,” Ryan says as they turn a corner and enter a dimly lit corridor lined with rows upon rows of grey cylinders. “Please don’t tell me there are Time Lords in those things.”

The Doctor shakes her head. “No, those are TARDISes,” she whispers, her eyes darting around anxiously. “But there’s something wrong here.”

“I feel it too,” the Master agrees. “These TARDISes should all be deactivated, but there’s still fresh Artron energy in the air.”

“Which means that someone’s been in here recently.” The Doctor slowly approaches the first TARDIS on her left, as if magnetically drawn to it. “But Gallifrey’s sealed away in a pocket dimension at the end of the universe, and all the Time Lords are dead. So who could it be...”

The TARDIS doors slide open at her touch, revealing a pitch-black console room.

“Doctor, are you sure about this?” Yaz asks. “Doctor!”

But the Doctor ignores her and steps inside. She pulls out her sonic and scans the room, while the others stand outside and watch with bated breath.

The Doctor stares slack-jawed at the sonic’s readings. “Impossible,” she breathes.

When she looks up, there’s another pair of eyes staring back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it obvious that I've never written smut before? Don't worry, that's probably the closest this fic will get to a sex scene. (*´ｪ｀*) Next chapter coming soon!


	3. New Dawns

“Who are you?” asks the Doctor, even though her sonic has already told her everything she needs to know.

The disheveled young man looks her up and down warily before answering. “Rayah. Rayah Ashlund, from Quadrant 16.”

 _So he's from Low Town_ , the Doctor notes, though the threadbare blue robe hanging off his shoulders was a pretty dead giveaway. “And I take it there are other Shobogans on board with you?”

Rayah crosses his arms sternly, and the Doctor imagines she’s meant to feel intimidated by him. “Maybe. Who wants to know?”

He unwittingly takes a step back when he sees the steely glint in her eyes. “I’m the Doctor.”

Awe washes over the boy’s face, as he reaches behind him to clutch the console edge for support. “I don’t believe it,” he breathes. “The Doctor’s just a legend. How… How can you be here?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” she replies, doing her best to sound calm and measured when her inner thoughts are anything but.

“Did someone say the Doctor?” asks an older, female voice from an unseen corridor leading off the console room. 

The Doctor impatiently flicks a switch on the dashboard that floods the TARDIS with light, just in time to see a tidal wave of Shobogans rush out from their hiding places and eagerly flock around her.

“Can it be? Is it really the Doctor?” 

“Oh great, another Timey, just what we need right now.”

“I saw him once, didn’t I tell you, son? During the Battle of Skull Moon, you should have seen him plow through the Dalek army like some kind of _god_.”

“Does this mean we can leave, Mama? Is she here to save us?”

“I thought she’d be taller, honestly.”

“Isn’t the Doctor supposed to be a man?”

“Hush now, Synth, it’s rude to comment on a Time Lady’s regeneration.”

“Ooh, she’s pretty _._ The legends never mentioned she was _pretty_ \--”

The Doctor steps back and shouts over the din, “Wait, just wait a second! How are you all even here?”

As the chatter dies down, a young, slender woman with olive skin and cropped raven-black hair emerges from the crowd. “We took refuge down here when the fighting started, Lady Doctor,” she answers softly. She’s dressed in a dark red gown, the Doctor notes, marking her as a servant within the Citadel. “We figured it would be the safest place to hide. Some of us managed to bring family members, too,” she adds, gesturing to the small group of raggedy Shobogans without the red and gold trappings of Citadel life. 

“You’ve been living down here for months,” the Doctor breathes.

“Yes, ma’am. None of us knows how to fly a TARDIS, of course, and we weren’t sure when it was safe to come out. We sent out scouts about two months ago, but when they came back they said that there was too much fire, that we couldn’t live on the surface. So we’ve been living off the food supplies here, but we don’t know how long we can keep going, ma’am,” she admits sadly, as she fidgets with the hem of her sleeve. “We’ve already pillaged half a dozen TARDISes to replenish our supplies.” 

She gazes up at the Doctor, and the desperation in her eyes is reflected in the hundreds of eyes clustered behind her. “Please, ma’am, can you help us? You’re our only hope.”

“Wait, I don’t understand,” Ryan whispers behind her. “Those are Gallifreyans, right? They’re Time Lords like you?”

“Shobogans,” the Master clarifies, and the Doctor can practically _hear_ him sneering. “Indigenous Gallifreyans. They don’t attend the Time Lord Academy, can’t even regenerate their bodies, so they live outside the Citadel like mayflies buzzing around a lightbulb.”

As he speaks, the Shobogans’ attention is drawn to the Master, and uneasy murmurs ripple through the crowd. The Doctor whips around and shoots him a glare, to which the Master responds by blowing her a kiss. “I’m not wrong, darling, and you know it,” he taunts.

“Who is he?” asks a young man, eying the Master warily.

The Doctor turns back to the Shobogans in shock. “Wait, you don’t know?” She glances back anxiously at the Master, looking completely unperturbed by the events rapidly unfolding before him. “He’s the _Master_.”

The murmuring increases, but it’s a far cry from the reaction the Doctor had expected from mentioning the name of the Time Lord who single-handedly raised hell on Gallifrey just a few months prior. The most she gets is from a middle-aged man near the back, who casually remarks, “I saw the Master once, I think, back when I was working in Arcadia. Bit of an arse, even for a Time Lord, if you ask me.”

The vein at the Master’s temple looks ready to explode. “I’ll choke you with your own timeline, you feeble little _speck_ ,” he growls, ready to pummel the Shobogan to the ground, when the Doctor interrupts him.

“Arcadia,” she breathes, hope flooding both her hearts. “There could be more survivors there. Come on, we have to check,” she insists, grabbing the Master’s hand and dragging him to the TARDIS next door. 

“We’ll be back soon, don’t worry,” she assures the crowd, then turns to her human companions. “Look after them for a bit, will you?” she asks with a nervous little smile, before the TARDIS doors glide shut behind her.

As soon as they’re inside, the Doctor rushes to input a series of coordinates, while the Master leans against the wall and grins like a cat with a dead bird in its paws. “I must say, I’m impressed, my dear Doctor,” he purrs. “Didn’t think you could pull off a ruse like that under pressure. So tell me, where are we _really_ racing off to? I hear the Callistra Nebula is beautiful this time of year.”

The Doctor freezes at the console as the TARDIS shudders to life. “What are you talking about?” she demands, thinly veiled anger creeping into her voice. “We’re _going_ to Arcadia.”

“To save a ragtag bunch of Shobogans too incompetent to die with the rest of them? Be serious, Doctor.”

To his surprise, the Doctor slams her fist on the console, fury burning in her eyes like dark coals. “To save the only people we have left!” she shouts. “Or what, are you upset that you didn’t finish the job? Which raises the question, why did none of them recognize you? You’ve been hiding something, haven’t you?”

The Master frowns. “Dearest, I wouldn’t be me if I weren’t.” He languidly makes his way to her, his fingers absently drumming along the edges of the console. “But in this particular case, I’m afraid you’re mistaken.”

The Doctor raises an eyebrow, firmly unconvinced.

“What, do you think I walked through the streets of Arcadia and the Capitol swinging a machete? I’m offended.” Agast, he presses a hand to his chest and hopes she’ll crack a smile at his theatrics, but her stony expression doesn’t budge.

His face darkens. “Neurotoxin,” he confesses. “Put it in the drinking water, drove everyone mad. Within days, they were burning buildings and hacking at their neighbors’ limbs, all on their own. Bit disappointed by how easy it was.”

Her stomach churns at the thought, but she does her best to hide her disgust. “So no one saw you,” she says.

“Well, none of the Shobogans, anyway,” the Master replies, his face contorting into a maniacal grin. “I _did_ have some extra fun with the other Time Lords--”

“Which I _don’t_ need to hear about,” she threatens lowly. “Honestly, you could at least pretend to be sorry, for my sake.”

The Master has another jab at the ready, but then he sees the genuine hurt in her eyes and backs off. Switching tactics, he asks, “So what _are_ you planning, Doctor?”

“Exactly what I said. We go to Arcadia, search for survivors, and bring them back to the Capitol with the others.”

“And then what, hmm? In terms of durability, Shobogans are just a tiny step above humans. Are you just going to drop them off and watch them pathetically try and fail to survive?”

“They managed to survive you,” the Doctor responds coolly as she keeps her hands busy with controls the Master knows are unnecessary. “And no, of course we’re not going to abandon them. We’re going to help them, Master.”

At that point, the Master can’t help but laugh. “I’m sorry, _we_? You do remember how I decimated their home and nearly everyone in it, right? Seeing as you keep harping on about it, that is.” 

When she doesn’t respond, his confident demeanor slips. “I know how much you love playing the hero,” he says, lifting the Doctor’s chin so that she’s staring straight into his eyes, “but you know that as soon as they find out what I did, they’ll want me dead, don’t you? And they’ll expect _you_ to act as executioner.”

The Doctor closes her eyes and thinks of her previous incarnation pulling the lever and watching blue electricity flood Missy’s body. Even if it was harmless, even if he had planned it from the beginning, the sight of her - of _any_ of the Master’s bodies - in mortal peril was something she never wished to endure again.

“They won’t find out unless we tell them.”

The Master’s face bursts into a grin, the kind of grin that would make any passerby run for safety beneath the nearest mountain. “Well now, isn’t _this_ the unexpected little morality lesson, Doctor,” he taunts, punctuating her name with a gentle tap on the bridge of her nose. “Oh, I can’t wait to hear how you try to justify this one.”

The Doctor scowls and crosses her arms testily. “We _will_ tell them, of course, once the time is right. But at the moment, you’re far more useful to them alive than dead. We need to wait until we can rebuild Gallifrey and have the structures in place for the Shobogans to put you on trial. Until that point, telling the Shobogans would just cause unnecessary panic and outrage.”

“Is that so? And under whose authority? Yours?”

“It’s not like you left a lot of alternatives,” she snaps.

“Nice try, love,” says the Master, still grinning from ear to ear, “but I see what this is really about.”

He steps closer, but the Doctor stands her ground, leaving just a scant few inches of space between them. Neither of them break eye contact, even as his fingers brush along her jawline and his breath warms her face as he affectionately whispers, “You never can resist, can you, angel?”

“Resist what?” she demands, glowering at him even as a part of her longs to pull him even closer.

He tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear, and she tries to pretend it’s tender, even as she sees the dark glint of madness in his eyes. “The universe crying out your name,” he whispers. “‘Help us, Doctor. You’re our only hope, Doctor. We love you, Doctor, and we’ll wash the centuries of blood from your hands if you save us now.’ Oh yes,” he laughs, wrapping an arm around her waist, “those have always been your favorite, haven’t they?”

The Doctor jerks away from him and mechanically returns her attention to the console. “You know I don’t see it like that,” she grumbles, tilting her head away from him so that her blonde hair falls between them like a curtain. 

“Doesn’t make it any less true.” 

The faint whirring of the TARDIS engines is his only response.

The Master hesitates for a moment. “You could kick me out,” he offers quietly, as he drifts to the other side of the console room. “ If your hearts are really set on this, you could drop me off on some remote planet and run back to your new pets.”

“And why would I do something like that?” she asks in a tone that hopefully comes off as nonchalant.

“Do you think the Shobogans would ever forgive me?” he scoffs, in a halfhearted attempt to sound like his usual cocky self. “An irredeemable criminal like me would just ruin your image.”

The Doctor straightens up and meets his gaze with frightening intensity. “You know you’re much more than a criminal to me,” she reprimands him sternly. “You’re my husband. When you’re not off plotting something stupid, I want you by my side.”

When he still looks unconvinced, she sighs and comes around the console to stand in front of him. “Alright, on your knees then.”

The Master’s bewildered expression quickly rearranges into a playful smirk. “Well, that’s certainly not how I thought this conversation would go,” he teases as his smoldering eyes roam up and down her body, “but I can work with this.”

Her face turns a delicate shade of pink. “Not what I meant,” she huffs. “You said you were a criminal, didn’t you? Well, seeing as I’m technically still President of Gallifrey, I’m offering you a trial. A trial of a Time Lord, by a Time Lord, in accordance with our laws.”

She places her hands on her hips and tries to look authoritative, but she has to chew on the inside of her lip to keep from smirking. “Now, kneel before your President, Lord Master.”

 _She’s gorgeous when she’s like this_ , he thinks as he lowers himself to the cold white TARDIS floor. He starts imagining how this could play out differently this evening, until the sound of her cold, harsh voice brings him back to reality.

“You are charged with the genocide of the Gallifreyan people, as well as the complete ecological destruction of Gallifrey itself. These are crimes of the highest magnitude, and according to our laws, warrant the highest degree of punishment. How do you plead?”

The answer should be so easy, but when she’s the one asking, there’s a crushing weight in his chest that makes it difficult to breathe, let alone speak. “Guilty,” he finally manages.

The Doctor nods gravely. “The maximum sentence for such a crime would be to rob you of all your remaining regenerations, cremate your body without ceremony, and erase all traces of you from the Time Lord Matrix.”

The Master hangs his head, silent as the grave.

“However,” she continues, “as Lord… er, as Lady President, that decision ultimately rests with me.” 

Then slowly, deliberately, she falls to her knees and takes his hands. “And after much consideration, I have decided that the only fitting punishment is... forgiveness.”

He looks up at her with alarm. Anger, even. “You know I don’t deserve it,” he scolds.

She shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. That’s not what forgiveness is for.”

Then, in that instant, the Master does something that not even the Doctor could have anticipated. 

The Master cries.

“Oh, Koschei,” she murmurs lovingly as she takes him in her arms. “It’s alright now, I forgive you. If there’s anyone who can understand what you did, it’s me.” She brushes away his tears, cradling his head in her lap like she would with a child. And for a moment, that’s all they really are: just two orphan children left to wander a great big universe.

Even after the tears subside, the Time Lords quietly cling to each other until the TARDIS rumbles to a halt.

“Now stand with me,” she says with a kiss, “and help me make things better.”

* * *

All in all, 639 survivors are found, ranging from two baby girls to half a dozen grandparents. Miraculously, only a handful of them sustained serious injuries during the fighting, and the Doctor thanks the TARDISes for stocking their medbays with the equipment necessary to keep them alive. They’ve managed to provide for themselves so well, the Doctor thinks, that it almost hurts to tear them away from their little safehaven and show them the reality of what Gallifrey has become.

She leads them through the charred ruins of Low Town, the Shobogan ghetto that circles the Time Lord Citadel, and tries her best to block out the horrified gasps and soft cries as they discover their homes reduced to ashes. For days, they sift through the remains in the hope of salvaging any keepsakes, and they do: old photographs, favorite teapots, childrens’ shoes. Little treasures of a lost world, just as miraculous as the people who fish them from the rubble.

But in the end, it’s not much. 

“How do we go on like this?” a Shobogan asks, holding a single basket containing all of his family’s worldly possessions. 

Same way we got here to begin with,” the Doctor answers. “Together.”

So they decide to live together, in the one place on Gallifrey still left in tact for them.

“Can you _imagine_ Rassilon’s face if he could see this?” the Doctor laughs as she watches the Shobogan refugees bustle around the Citadel, arms laden with piles of food and clothing. “Shobogans occupying Time Lord living quarters. He’d probably regenerate on the spot, don’t you think?”

The Master opens his mouth, but she doesn’t wait for a response: in the blink of an eye, she’s already immersed herself in the crowd by offering to carry a jug of water, half a dozen books, and an entire nightstand on her head.

“Oh, she’ll never get enough of this,” he says, as he leans against a pillar and watches fondly as the Shobogans flock around her with warm smiles, even after she trips and sends the objects flying halfway across the hall. He can see it in her eyes, how enamored she is with it all, this happy epilogue she’s stumbled into just when all hope was lost. Always so good at saving the things he breaks.

“Good, because she deserves a little happiness in between putting up with you.” 

The Master reluctantly tears his eyes away from the Doctor, hopping around the crowd like a bright golden flame, as Yaz comes to stand beside him. “Oh? Because trust me, Yasmin Khan, I have ways of making my wife _very_ happy.”

The Master isn’t used to referring to the Doctor as his wife, but if it makes Yaz grimace like that, he’ll have to start using it more often. “I don’t think I’ll ever know what the Doctor sees in you,” she snarls.

“Of course not, you’re human,” he quips. “You can barely grasp basic quantum mechanics, let alone the inner workings of beings from a civilization that’s centuries upon centuries beyond you.”

“I can grasp basic morality, at least.” Yaz turns away from the Master and looks out onto the sea of smiling Shobogan families like she’s watching them drown. “Their friends and family members are dead because of you,” she accuses, keeping her voice low so they can’t be overheard. “I spent a week burying them, and they’d all be rolling in their graves if they could see you here with them right now.”

The Master rolls his eyes and turns his attention back to the Doctor. “In that case, thank Rassilon you remembered to bury their eyes, too.”

“Should’ve buried _you_ while I was at it,” she grumbles.

“Child, I’m allergic to the concept of permanent death. I’d like to see you try though,” he adds, looking her up and down while debating how many bones he could break before the Doctor noticed him.

“The only reason I’m tolerating you is because the Doctor asked us to,” she reminds him, “and now I’m seriously starting to regret agreeing to it.”

“Careful, Yaz,” he taunts, clapping her on the back just a tad too forcefully to be considered friendly. “If you start using the Doctor as your moral compass, you’ll find yourself more lost than a Slitheen in a Dalek camp.”

“I’m starting to get that, yeah,” she admits under her breath. Yaz looks to the Doctor, twirling in the center of the crowd, practically drunk with laughter, and her heart constricts painfully. “You really think you love her, do you? We’ve all seen the way you act with her when you think no one else is watching.”

“Love, hate, and everything in between,” he replies simply, never once taking his eyes away from her. “There’s no one word capable of encapsulating everything we are to one another. We may have our disagreements, but in the end, we’re bound together.”

Yaz crosses her arms over her red leather jacket. “Oh yeah? Because I’ve heard things like that before. I’m a police officer; I know what an abusive relationship looks like. And I saw what you did to her,” she hisses. “When we made it to the Matrix Chamber, after you had finished toying with her, do you know how we found her? Lying on the ground, barely conscious. We thought she was _dead_ at first.”

The Master’s jaw clenches. “The Doctor’s stronger than you take her for; I knew she’d make it out. She always does.”

“Until one day she doesn’t.”

He opens his mouth to respond when a loud, pained gasp, like someone struggling for breath, emanates from the crowd. “Doctor,” he breathes before rushing into the fray, Yaz following close behind.

At first glance, Yaz thinks the Doctor’s doubled over in laughter, but then she sees the pain in her clenched face and rushes to her side while the Master angrily shoos the crowd away. “Doctor, what’s wrong?” she asks, noticing both her hands clutching at her side.

After a few tense seconds, the Doctor sighs and straightens up, and while she doesn’t look to be in pain anymore, distress is still written on her face. “My ectospleen’s deflated,” she murmurs, eyes wide as though she doesn’t quite believe it.

At that, the Master whips around to look at her with an identical look of shock; meanwhile, Ryan and Graham skid to a standstill behind Yaz. “We heard a commotion and came running,” says Graham. “Is she okay?”

“One of her organs deflated, I think,” Yaz explains. “Do we need to get you to a hospital or something?” she asks, placing a hand on the Doctor’s shoulder.

“No, no, it’s fine,” she says dazedly, shrugging her off. “There’s nothing wrong with me, it just means I… I….”

“It means she’s pregnant,” the Master finishes, looking equally floored.

“Pregnant?” Yaz repeats. “How?”

The Master shoots her a withering look, and her face turns beet red. “Unless any of you are brave enough to admit to sleeping with my wife to my face, I think even your microscopic brains can answer that one.”

“Hang on,” says Ryan, hand pressed to his forehead, “can we go back to the part where you said one of her organs was deflating?”

“Oh, that’s just my ectospleen,” says the Doctor absently, still staring straight ahead with a glassy-eyed look on her face. “Helps my body filter out toxins and poisons, but that’s about it. All non-essential organs will deflate to make room, keeps us from swelling up like you lot. Humans always look like they’ve swallowed a planet whenever they’re….”

Four sets of eyes look to her, ready to gauge her reaction.

“You know what?” she begins carefully, as she makes a beeline for the suite designated exclusively for the two Time Lords, “I’m going to go in here, step inside my TARDIS, and then I’ll come out once I’ve figured out the emotional response I should have had in this very moment.” And with that, the touch-activated door made of tinted glass slides shut in their faces.

“Should one of us go after her?” asks Ryan after an awkward silence. “Make sure she’s alright?”

“I’ll go,” Yaz quickly volunteers, hand already on the activation panel. “This is definitely a girls-only talk. The rest of you just wait out here.”

Graham and Ryan watch her go, then anxiously glance at the Master, who sighs, pulls out a pack of ginger humbugs, and walks off in search of a nice, quiet corridor to get drunk in until he can bring himself to confront this new revelation. As he walks away, however, the two humans can hear him grumble:

“She could’ve at least been a _little_ more enthusiastic.”

* * *

Little to her surprise, Yaz finds the Doctor already covered in elbow grease, her arms submerged in a mess of tangled wires beneath the TARDIS console. “Hiya, Yaz!” she says, her bubbly smile not quite reaching her eyes. “Sorry, bit busy at the moment, can’t talk right now.”

Yaz smiles kindly back. She’s grown used to this coping strategy by now, so she wordlessly takes a seat on one of the hexagonal tiles and lets the sound of creaky panels and electric sparks fill the room for a few minutes. 

“Guess this week’s been full of surprises,” Yaz begins casually. Best not to overwhelm her with too many questions, she’s learned.

The Doctor's laugh is genuine, if a bit clipped. “Yeah, you could say that.”

“I know Graham and Ryan’s heads are still spinning about it. And I’m sure you’re feeling surprised, too.”

“Nah, I shouldn’t be,” she says, flopping on her stomach to get a better look at a hidden panel beneath the center crystal. “After all, he’s a man and I’m a woman now. I just forget that sometimes. I say forget. Ignore it, really. Still not used to being a woman, I suppose. He had fun being a woman, always wearing dresses and styling his hair all fancy. But me, it just means I get ignored more often. Talked down to.” She rips out a wire with a bit more force than necessary. “Which isn’t right, obviously. Being a woman shouldn’t change anything about me, so I just don’t think about it a lot. Except for now, I guess,” she whispers.

Yaz nods. “It must be such a shock for you. But you’re right: being a woman doesn’t change who you are. And neither does this.” She hesitates, unsure of how to phrase the next part delicately. “You should know that no one’s going to make you do anything that makes you feel uncomfortable. Whatever you do from this point on is your decision.”

The Doctor pokes her head out and looks at Yaz in confusion, before the implication clicks in her brain. “I… I don’t know, honestly,” she admits. “My people were pretty terrible, Yaz. I don’t know if our race deserves to live on. But that’s not the… the child’s fault, either. And if we’re really doing this, if we’re really rebuilding Gallifrey from the ground up, then… maybe this is a good omen. A sign that we should build a world we’d be proud to give to our child.”

“Maybe, but how do _you_ feel about it? Because it’s okay to be scared about being a parent, you know,” she assures her.

The Doctor’s sonic falls to the ground with a clatter that fills the console room. 

“Yaz, I’ve been a parent before,” she murmurs.

Her dark brown eyes widen. “You have? With _him_?”

“No, never with him. But I’ve been married before, Yaz. Quite a few times, actually. I’ve had children, grandchildren, maybe even some great-grandchildren.”

“But you never talk about them.”

“Lost them a long time ago, like I said when we met.” It amazes Yaz how composed she sounds when talking about the death of her children. She wonders if time has healed those wounds, or if time has merely given her the practice she needs to fake acceptance. Knowing the Doctor, Yaz suspects the latter. 

She’s stopped pretending to make repairs by this point, instead laying on her back and staring up at the golden Gallifreyan writing that dots the TARDIS ceiling like stars. “Don’t know if I’m ready for another child. But then again, I’ve been saying that for a dozen regenerations. Maybe I should give it a chance. Might help the two of us heal, too,” she adds as an afterthought.

“Would the Master really help you with raising a child?” Yaz asks skeptically. “Because he definitely doesn’t seem like the father type.”

The Doctor sighs. “I know you hate him, Yaz, and you have every right to. I’m not telling you to change how you feel. He’s hurt me and the people I care about countless times, but he’s also saved my life, too. We’re both damaged people, and for as much as I’ll fight him to death about certain things, in the end we’re the only ones who can understand each other.”

“But he’s a murderer!” Yaz insists. “He just goes around hurting people, which is the opposite of everything I’ve seen you do! I don’t understand how you can just accept someone like him.”

“The Master has his burdens, and so do I. He’s killed people, and I’ve killed people, too. Different reasons, maybe, but the universe doesn’t care about reasons all the time. The outcome is the same either way. When you’ve lived for as long as we have, Yaz, you find that good and evil are sometimes two sides of the same coin.”

Yaz is thoroughly unconvinced, but she nods anyway, in an attempt to understand. “And so what, you think having a baby will make him forget about wanting to conquer entire planets?” 

The Doctor clambers to her feet and starts wiping the grime from her hands. “I’m done trying to coerce him into good behavior. My last face tried that, and it didn’t turn out so well for either of us. Still, I came close to a breakthrough, possibly. Always an optimist, me. And these past couple of weeks have been a good reminder of what we used to be, a long time ago. Maybe there’s still a chance for us to be like that again.”

An all-too-familiar glimmer of hope springs to life in the Doctor’s eyes as she walks over to Yaz and pats her on the shoulder. “Thanks for listening, Yaz,” she says with that infectious smile of hers that first drew Yaz into the TARDIS, in what feels like a lifetime ago. “I’m so glad you lot decided to stay on board. It’s going to be an interesting few months ahead, and I’m really grateful that I can rely on you.”

The Doctor turns around and heads for the TARDIS doors, assuming Yaz would follow along, but she stays seated for a moment, watching the newfound spring in the Doctor's step and marveling at how a being older than her comprehension can still be so childishly naive. 

Yaz can’t help but let out an exasperated sigh. “Let’s hope you’re right, Doctor. We’re relying on you, too.” 

* * *

It’s the first time in Gallifreyan history that Shobogans have ever set foot inside the Panopticon, the humans learn, as they watch the Shobogans marvel in awe at the gold-rimmed circular platforms stacked a dozen meters high, where the almighty Time Lords once sat and issued edicts that could shape star systems for generations. Now, there are only enough people to fill the first two or three rows, and as Yaz, Graham, and Ryan gaze up at the hundreds of empty platforms above them, it sinks in once again just how much this planet has lost.

The Time Lords who once filled those seats are now laid to rest upon a funeral pyre in the center of the Panopticon for all to see. Suddenly, a hush falls over the crowd as the Doctor and the Master step into view and approach the pyre, the Doctor hoisting a single torch high above her head. Both are dressed in traditional blood-red Time Lord robes, except for the ridiculous hats Yaz heard the Doctor complain about earlier that morning. Mouthing words the companions are too far away to make out, the Doctor sets the pyre alight and watches the flames lick at their faces, stoic even in death. The smoke rises through the gaping hole in the ceiling, exposing a bright orange sky. 

The Doctor doesn’t even need to raise her voice to address the large crowd; everyone’s attention is already magnetically fixed on her. “We have all suffered a great many losses,” she begins, her voice echoing throughout the largely empty room, above the crackle of the flames. “Homes destroyed. Loved ones lost. Lives shattered. Gallifrey will always remain scarred by the tragedy of this day.”

“However,” she continues, “in spite of all the odds, Gallifrey is still alive. Though many have tried to destroy us, none have managed it for long. Not even the most horrendous war in the universe could erase us all. Which is why I look around today and say that, because of each and every one of you, Gallifrey stands!”

At those words, the Shobogans surge to their feet and roar, “Gallifrey stands!”

As the last of the Time Lords step away from the funeral pyre, Gallifrey’s twin suns emerge from the smoke cloud and shine down on them, illuminating their triumphant faces. Then, perhaps finding himself swept up in the moment, the Master suddenly takes the Doctor in his arms and kisses her, which only amplifies the cheers from the crowd.

“You did it, love,” he murmurs in her ear when they finally break apart. “You saved them.”

Meanwhile, in the corner of the Panopticon, the three humans watch the celebration hesitantly, not quite sure how to react. “Oh God, I’m not sure if I can handle this,” Graham says before slipping quietly out of the room. Moments later, Ryan follows him. 

As the Shobogans continue to cheer for the man who slaughtered their people and the woman who forgave him, Yaz sits alone and stares blankly into the funeral pyre, watching as their faces crumble into dark ashes and pale bones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait; this chapter ended up being longer than I had anticipated. Thank you for all the lovely comments, and I'll do my best to get chapter 4 up quickly!


	4. Drowning in Memories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear I'll learn how to write more concise chapters one day...

_The night is dark, the moon has died, and the Doctor is afraid._

_As a child, on her way from the Great Houses to the Citadel, the Doctor would often take shortcuts through these woods, clambering over boulders and fallen trees as she chased after her closest friend to see who could make it there first. Tonight, however, the woods are different: the trees are leafless, the grass wilted, the soil barren. Where there was once the hollering and laughter of children, now, there is only the wind, crying through the branches._

_She walks the path from her memories, still the same after millennia away, and listens to the wind. It’s the only sound she can hear, she soon realizes: not the snapping of twigs underfoot, nor the swish of her robe around her ankles, nor even the frantic beating of her hearts. Just the wind, crying, crying, crying through the branches._

_As she wanders deeper into the heart of the forest, however, she hears the sound transform into something different. Not the crying of the wind, but the crying of a baby._

_She gathers her robe in both hands and breaks into a run, flinching as twigs and vines graze her skin but never slowing down. She follows the sound, fearing it would disappear at any second, but instead it amplifies: two, then four, then eight, then a hundred children, all crying unseen in the darkness._

_Perhaps they are simply afraid of the dark. The Doctor can relate. It’s the one enemy you can never run from, not when it lives inside yourself._

_But fear keeps you fast, an old face once said, so that’s just what she does. As she runs, she looks down and sees black, inky tendrils flow through the soil like tiny rivers, killing everything they touch. They steal the red from the grass and leave it a cold ashy grey, make the trees shrivel and crumple like paper. Within minutes, the blood-red of her robes and the sunshine yellow of her hair are the only colors left to light the darkness._

_She soon finds the source of that darkness, as she stumbles into a clearing and finds herself on the bank of a lake, so black that at first it looks like a chasm in the ground._

_The Doctor falls to her knees as the numbers of crying children suddenly grow to the millions, billions, past what she can count. The pressure in her head is unbearable, so she curls up into a ball and prays the crushing gravity of their voices will come to pass._

_After a small eternity, when the pressure lessens enough for her to open her eyes again, she notices a shadowy figure standing across from her on the opposite shore of the lake. Though she can’t make out a face, she somehow knows that the figure is smiling at her._

_Then the shadow holds out his hand._

_Compelled by a desire she can’t seem to name, not when the cries are drowning out any attempt at coherent thought, she hauls herself upright and walks toward him in a trance, even as the dark water seeps into her robes and starts weighing her down. She ventures out about a fourth of the way across the lake, the water reaching just up to her waist, when she places a hand to her swollen abdomen and calls out, “I can’t go any further. Please, I’m having a baby. I can’t do this anymore.”_

_Like she’s delivered some kind of twisted punchline, the children’s crying switches instantly to laughter, cold and mirthless and unforgiving. The shadow’s smile grows wider, she senses, right before he snaps his fingers and summons black tendrils that curl around her pale throat._

_WIth one insistent tug, the tendrils pull her into the water. And although she should hear the water rushing past her ears, the sound of the children remains as clear as ever. She thrashes about a few times, but deep down she knows how foolish it would be to struggle. She brought this on herself, after all, even though she has no idea how._

_As she closes her eyes and sinks to the bottom of the lake, the Doctor hears one child weeping amid the chorus of laughter, and somehow knows it’s her own._

* * *

The Doctor jolts awake with a cry that reverberates off the walls of her bedroom, bathed in darkness except for the pale moonlight that trickles through translucent red curtains. Her hearts hammer painfully as her eyes dart around the room in search of dying trees or wailing children, but instead there’s only dark red tapestries and golden runes covering the walls. 

Something brushes against her thigh and she jumps, but it’s just the Master, turning in their bed to stare up at her with concern. “What's wrong, Doctor?”

She opens her mouth but nothing comes out except for desperate gasps for air. She places a hand to her throat and searches for the imprint of tendrils, but finds there's nothing there.

“Hush now, dear, you’re safe,” he whispers, wrapping a blanket around her shoulders as she shivers in her nightgown, despite the warm summer night. 

“Are you alright, Lady Doctor?” asks a muffled voice outside their door. “I heard shouting from across the hall.”

“She’s fine, Reneth,” the Master replies, as he pulls her close and starts stroking her hair in an effort to soothe her. “Just a nightmare, that’s all.”

“Well, that's a relief; I thought she might be going into labor already. In that case, I’ll just pop down to the kitchens and make her some tea.” The patter of footsteps hurrying down the hallway quickly fade into silence.

“It wasn’t a nightmare,” the Doctor murmurs as she rests her head on his shoulder and tries to bring her heart rate down. “I… I think it’s the baby.”

The Master's eyes widen. “What do you mean? What did you see?”

She struggles to find the right words, so instead, she presses their foreheads together and shows him.

“I think it’s a vision from the baby,” she whispers after they pull apart. 

His expression stays decidedly neutral. “What makes you say that?” he asks calmly.

“I’m not sure,” she admits, casting her eyes downward. “Instinct, I guess.”

“Even if that was some kind of vision of the future, why would our child show it to you? How is that even possible?”

“It’s not unheard of for a Time Lord to form a psychic connection with their unborn child,” the Doctor argues, even as the words feel stupid when she says them out loud. “Look, I don’t know exactly _how_ it’s possible, but I know it’s meant to be a warning that has something to do with the baby.”

A soft knock on the door announces Reneth’s arrival with a tea tray, which she sets on the bedside table before curtseying and leaving. After adding a good six or seven sugarcubes, the Doctor holds the cup in her hands, letting its warmth replace the bone-deep chill of the dying forest.

“Your hands are shaking,” the Master notices, and he cups his hands around hers to steady them.

The Doctor shrugs him off and takes a sip; she grimaces, then adds another sugarcube for good measure. “You don’t believe me,” she softly accuses him, as she stares into the ripples she’s made in the tea, bright yellow like the sun. Meanwhile, the moonlight casts silvery shadows across the Master’s face, but leaves his eyes dark and unreadable. 

“I didn’t say that,” he begins, treading carefully. “I know this is a stressful time, Theta. You’re more than four months along, and at this stage it’s perfectly natural to feel anxious or confused—”

“This isn’t hormones!” she insists a little too loudly. She sets the teacup down with a rattle. “I’m being serious. This is about the safety of our child, Master. Something’s wrong, I can feel it.”

The Master sighs and pulls her to his chest. “You’re right,” he says as he runs a gentle hand across the slight swell beneath her nightgown. “Let’s talk about this in the morning, alright?”

The Doctor frowns, because she already knows that when she wakes up he won’t be there, and he’ll carry on like this conversation never happened. But she’s too tired to fight him, so she settles into his arms and lets him believe that she’s drifted off to sleep, even though her mind keeps racing all through the night.

* * *

Theta Sigma was never particularly known for his studiousness back at the Time Lord Academy. Quite the opposite, in fact. If it hadn’t been for his frequent escapades with Koschei, where they hid in secluded back alleys and studied in between more, ahem, _pleasurable_ activities, he might have flunked out of the Academy entirely.

Which is why the Doctor would have traded her left kidney (her favorite kidney, mind you) just to see the look on her professors’ faces if they could see her now, standing before an outdoor amphitheater of students as she ran the Academy singlehandedly. Granted, it was an extremely watered-down version of the Academy, in part due to the fact that none of the pupils were aspiring Time Lords, and in part due to how few there were to begin with. Less than a hundred children had survived Oblivion, as the planet-wide massacre was now referred to, so rather than divide them into grade levels, she held morning classes for children ages eight to twelve, then classes for the adolescents in the afternoons. 

Some of the Shobogans had tried to argue that a Time Lady needn’t waste her time educating their children, but it was work she was more than happy to do. After all, the Doctor had always held a soft spot for teaching, regardless of time, place, or subject matter. Not that the concept of subjects was a particularly Gallifreyan concept, mind you. What her previous face had often tried and failed to explain to his colleagues at St. Paul’s University whenever confronted about an astrophysics lecture that had morphed into a discussion on sub-Saharan horticulture, was that life could not simply be compartmentalized into a neat and tidy course packet. 

One could derive information about, say, a flower from memorizing a series of diagrams, but to _understand_ a flower required much more digging ( _pun intended_ , she thought proudly). How did physics account for its ability to grow straight up without yielding to gravity? How did previous cultures harness its chemical properties in food or medicine? And how was it used symbolically in literature throughout the ages? The questions could carry on for hours, and oftentimes, that’s what her classes became. Unlike her former students at St. Paul’s, who were either too shy or too brain-dead to contribute to a class discussion (with one shining exception, who we will _absolutely refrain from dwelling on, Brain Number 19_ ), the Shobogans, who traditionally received tragic little in the way of formal education, were brimming with questions for a woman who had witnessed the birth and death of the universe, as well as a great deal of the filler bits.

As a bonus, that woman had a penchant for inciting at least one semi-controlled explosion per lecture. A significant upgrade from a white-haired Scotsman scowling at a chalkboard, if she said so herself. She had kept her previous incarnation’s chalkboard for nostalgia’s sake, although his eyebrows probably would have fallen off if he could see it now, covered in scorch marks and splotches of dark purple slime.

“And that,” she concludes to her audience, doubled over their desks in laughter as she holds up two charred glass beakers, “is why you should never take Andromea’s word at face value when she writes about time unravelers being just another one of your average anti-paradox machines.”

She removes her goggles with a snap and takes a seat on top of her desk, made of smooth white crystal to match the swirling white marble of the amphitheater's pillars and tiered platforms. She swings her legs idly, the golden runes in her Time Lord robes catching the sunlight with every slight movement, and takes a moment to appreciate the sound of children’s laughter, so much more welcome than the distorted laughter from last night's vision.

Shaking off any more thoughts of creepy forests for the time being, the Doctor sets the beakers off to one side and points to one of the older girls, about ten or eleven years old, with her hand raised. “Question, Nolayan?” 

Nolayan’s meek, hesitant voice still rings out clearly in spite of the chatter from students still pointing at the glob of purple sludge in the Doctor’s hair. “Why would Andromea invent time unraveling if it was that dangerous?”

“Well, you see, Andromea wasn’t always just a dimensional engineer,” the Doctor explains patiently. “Originally, she was asked to design the time unravelers as a weapon, to tear wounds into the fabric of time so that any enemies who fell through would find their most defining memories, their very _identities_ , lost to time forever.”

“Ooh, like the Daleks?” a younger boy pipes up. “During the Time War?”

At those words, a hush falls over the room. The Time War is the one topic which the Doctor has avoided mentioning beyond the most cursory details, and until today, no one has had the bravery to speak those words aloud.

If a shadow of grief flits across the Doctor’s face, she prays that none of her students notice. “Ten points to Kei,” she answers smoothly, if with noticeably less enthusiasm than usual. 

Encouraged by her response, another hand shoots up. “Did she fight in the Time War with you?”

“She did, yes.”

“Was she brave like you?”

“None of us were _brave_ , Era,” says the Doctor with a sad little smile. “We were all terrified.”

“But was she nice at least? What was she like?”

The Doctor cringes. _Ruthless would be the first word to come to mind,_ she thinks. She remembers the wide, crazed look in Andromea’s eyes when they scanned a decimated Dalek camp, remembers the terrible, bloodthirsty cry as she flailed a recon Dalek alive until it screamed for mercy. Andromea committed war crimes during the Time War like any other Time Lord, but she was one of the few unhinged ones who managed to find satisfaction - fulfillment, even - on a battlefield, making her both loathsome and pitiful in equal measure.

But the Doctor also remembers standing before her body at her funeral, comforting her grieving family, singing hymns at her grave. And while she has never hesitated in the past to decry the atrocities of her race in the past, she has also never relished speaking ill of the dead.

“No one acts their best when they’re afraid,” the Doctor explains after a contemplative pause. “She was a genius, and I wish she had been given the chance to be a genius during a time of peace instead of a time of fear. We all had our regrets near the end of the war, and to her credit, she died trying to undo the horrors of her own creation. She died trying to undo herself.”

It hadn’t occurred to the Doctor that a Time Lord suicide might possibly be subject material too heavy for a group of schoolchildren on a sunny Friday morning, but thankfully their slack-jawed faces don't appear too traumatized.

“But earlier you said time unraveling could save people, too!” insists Nolayan’s squeaky voice. “She ended up helping so many people! Why would she want to undo it?”

 _Because it wasn’t enough,_ the Doctor thinks sadly. _No matter how many you save, it's never enough. Anyone with blood on their hands knows that._

“Because in the end, she learned that some things are better left forgotten.”

* * *

“Steady now! Everyone in position?”

High above the Citadel, fifty or so tiny black drones hover around the jagged edges of the broken glass dome, while down on the ground, in the middle of an otherwise empty pavilion, an equal number of Shobogans stand in a matching ring. Black headgear etched with gold swirls obscures the top half of their faces, but given the telepathic circuits lodged at their temples, unencumbered vision isn’t a pressing need at the moment. 

Off to the side, the one Shobogan without headgear shields his eyes from the afternoon suns and squints at the drones overhead. “And... now!”

To any observer unfamiliar with Gallifreyan technology, the next thirty seconds would look like a fleet of airborne metal spiders weaving a web of translucent silk above the city. Only when the lattice begins to ripple and expand would it become clear that the repair drones had in fact released a special type of liquid glass, designed to weigh less than air and solidify within a minute of contact with oxygen. Meanwhile, with the careful tilt of their heads backwards and forwards, the Shobogans on the ground quickly navigate the drones through the shrinking gaps in the lattice just before the glass finishes expanding, sealing the dome without so much as a visible crack.

“Looks good, everyone!” says the overseer, giving the crew a thumbs up. “Let’s break for lunch, then get cracking on the Celestial Tower in the north district.”

While a handful of onlookers applaud the newly sealed dome, Ryan carefully removes his headpiece and the telepathic circuitry, just before a tall, broad Shobogan boy with dark freckles and sandy blonde hair comes over and claps him on the shoulder. “Hey, you’re really getting the hang of this, Ryan!”

“Thanks, Hann,” says Ryan, as the two of them head towards a shiny metal crate to drop off their equipment. “Lot easier for me working with these telepathic things, you know. Can’t tell you how good it is to have a thought inside my head and actually make things move properly on the outside. Kinda wish I had one of these when playing Fifa.”

Hann smiles sheepishly as he shoves his headset into a cubicle. “Is that supposed to be another Earth reference? I am trying to remember these, I swear.”

“No worries, mate. There’s a lot of them, I know.” As he tucks his headset away, Ryan tilts his head back to stare up at the twin suns of Gallifrey, still disorientating after over half a year. 

Hann gives him a sympathetic look. “I’m sure you really miss it, huh?”

“Sometimes, yeah,” he admits with a shrug. “It’s not too bad, though. You kinda get used to feeling out of sorts when traveling with the Doctor. Funny, this is probably the planet that feels the closest to home now, apart from… well, _home_.”

“It’s incredible that you guys are sticking around to support her. How’s she doing, by the way?”

The pair walk towards a shaded corner of the pavilion where other Shobogans are already beginning their lunch. “Still the same as ever, I guess. Never sitting still, even for a second. We had a charades night the other day, and me and Graham had to stop her from bellyflopping on the ground and giving her kid a concussion or something.”

“What was she trying to act out?”

Ryan rolls his eyes. “A banana.”

“Oh, that’s an Earth fruit, right?” Hann rummages through the pockets of his beige trousers and pulls out two smooth yellow orbs, roughly the size of a large apple. “You ever tried a _keki_ before? It’s the same color as a banana, I think,” he adds, his mouth struggling to wrap itself around the foreign Earth word.

Ryan watches Hann bite through the thick yellow peel, revealing a fleshy white inside peppered with black seeds. When Ryan takes a bite, he finds that it tastes much saltier than expected, with a hint of something cinnamon-y that reminds him of his nan’s spice rack. 

“Sorry about the taste,” says Hann, misreading the faraway look in Ryan’s eyes. “Bio-grown food’s never quite as good as the original organics. Always tastes a bit coppery around the edges, if you ask me. Honestly, I can’t wait until the Otherstide harvest, when we’ll finally get to eat some proper food, straight out of the soil.”

Ryan nods and pockets the rest of the _keki_ , just as a nearby voice calls out in a cheerful yet somewhat strained tone, “Can one of you boys lend a hand?”

The boys turn around and come face-to-face with a young Shobogan woman dragging a man by the wrist, as a thin trickle of blood runs down his other arm from a nasty purple bruise on his shoulder. “Aoka, quit it,” the man insists gruffly, but the steely resolve in her grey eyes is unwavering.

“I need to get Braki to the medical wing,” Aoka explains, “but _this_ stubborn _trunkike_ doesn’t want to go. Can one of you help me haul him there?”

Hann and Ryan exchange an uncertain look before Ryan volunteers. “Um, sure thing, Aoka. Been meaning to visit me grandad anyway.”

Aoka bursts into a smile. “Oh, I _knew_ I could count on you, Ryan,” she gushes, releasing Braki’s wrist to walk arm-in-arm with Ryan, trusting that Braki would follow along behind them. She bats her eyelashes and runs a hand through her hair, sending glossy black tresses cascading down her pale shoulders. “See you around, Hann!” she calls absentmindedly, already halfway across the pavilion. 

Hann gives Ryan an apologetic wave goodbye before retreating to the shade with the other Shobogans. “Er, so what exactly happened to him?” asks Ryan, as he contemplates how best to free his arm from Aoka’s vice-like grip. 

“Oh, just a fight with Ganin,” she says with a dismissive little wave as she leads Ryan up a spiral staircase built from bright orange amber. “Have you met Ganin yet? Tall, dark, brooding, looks like he could smash a boulder over your head with one hand? Well, turns out he can. That boy’s making these fights a daily event, I swear to Rassilon’s fiery arse.”

“It’s not his fault,” Braki says gently, his bright green eyes flickering down at the cracks in the steps that still need repairing. “Ganin lost his sister and both his parents during Oblivion. He’s got a lot to work through.”

Aoka scoffs and flicks back her hair. “We’ve lost people during Oblivion too, and you don’t see us going on a rampage every other day.” She turns her attention back to Ryan and grips his forearm with both hands. “Humans _,_ on the other hand, are _much_ more self-restrained and dignified, I’m sure,” she hums. “Why else would the Doctor favor you out of every other species in the universe?” 

Ryan mentally shuts the history book of bloodthirsty human wars flying through his head, and instead nods along as Aoka pushes open the glass door of the Capitol’s medical wing.

Well, to call it an entire wing was a bit generous, Ryan would admit. Only twenty hospital beds occupy the blindingly white, sterile room, and only one of them currently has an occupant: another Shobogan boy, not much older than Ryan, dangling his legs off the edge of the bed as a decidedly non-Shobogan granddad applies the final layer of gauze to his forehead.

“Nicely done, Graham,” comments the elder of the two Shobogan women appraising his work, before turning to the patient. “I think you’re all set, Elion.” 

“And just in time, too,” mutters the other nurse, looking up at the three newcomers. Her pitch-black eyes zero in on Braki’s beaten shoulder. “You had a run-in with Ganin, too?”

Braki nods grimly as he swaps places with Elion. “It’s nothing, Reneth, I mean it. I wouldn’t have bothered you about it at all if Aoka didn’t insist.”

Reneth just sighs and turns to her colleague. “You can go on break, Kathra, I’ve got this. Toss me the tissue regenerator on your way out?”

Kathra slips a plastic grey capsule into Reneth’s hands before tugging her blonde hair free from its ponytail. “Alright then, I’m leaving you in charge, dear. Make sure you give Graham some practice with the regenerator, too. Oh, and the Doctor’s due for an ultrasound later this afternoon, don’t forget.”

At the mention of the Doctor, Aoka tilts her head in confusion. “Hang on, that’s not right. The Doctor cut her afternoon session of the Academy short, said she was busy for the rest of the day. I know because my sister tried to guilt me into watching her kid, so I took Braki to the hospital to get out of it.”

“Ugh, should’ve figured you were acting too altruistic today,” Braki groans. 

“So wait, then where is she?” asks Ryan, sharing a worried look with Graham.

“How are we supposed to know?“ asks Reneth dismissively, as she pulls out a handful of cloth bandages. “Not like a Time Lord would bother giving us her daily schedule. She’s been having trouble sleeping recently; probably just needed to lie down, I imagine.”

“Poor dear,” says Kathra, shaking her head. “She shouldn’t be working so hard, not with a baby on the way. Less than two months to go now, bless her heart. She must be exhausted.”

Meanwhile, the two humans struggle to keep a straight face at the thought of the Doctor sitting in one place for more than two minutes, letting alone experiencing anything close to exhaustion. 

“I swear, if she’s taken the TARDIS to go hunting for indestructible sea slugs again, we’ll have to start following her in shifts,” Graham whispers as an aside to his grandson.

“Or worse, tell her husband,” Ryan snickers.

“Oi, we’ve already got plenty of work going on here, don’t need a murder on our hands,” Graham laughs as he reaches for a cloth bandage and some sterilizing fluid. "Speaking of work, how's the reconstruction going today?"

Ryan shrugs and sticks his hands in the pockets of his jeans. "Pretty good, I guess. Still trying to get the hang of everything around here, though."

"It'll come, Ryan, just give yourself some time. This _is_ an alien planet, after all. In the meantime, it helps to keep yourself busy."

"Yeah, looks like you're having fun, at least," Ryan comments, letting his eyes roam across the blank sterile walls. "I remember when a place like this would scare you half to death."

Graham smiles as he picks up a syringe. "Yeah, well, it's nice to be on the other end of one of these things for a change." His hands pause in the middle of unscrewing a cap, and there's a distant look in his eyes that Ryan recognizes all too well. "Wonder what Grace would think if she were here to see this. Sheffield bus driver to alien nurse, do you think she'd believe it?"

"She'd probably spend a minute telling you how proud she was, then an hour pointing out all the things you were doing wrong so that you wouldn't start gunning for her job, too."

The two humans share a laugh just before they notice Reneth shoot Graham an irritated, _get over here_ look. "We'll talk more at dinner, alright, son? Give us a shout if you run into the Doc, but don't worry about her too much; she’s sure to turn up. Always off on an adventure, that one.”

Ryan nods and gives his granddad a pat on the back. As he lets Aoka half-drag him out of the medical ward, however, Graham’s parting words still float through his mind, and he can't help but wonder that if their alien best friend, their guide and anchor on an otherwise alien world, is really off on another one of her alien adventures, then why leave her human friends behind?

* * *

Gallifrey’s second sun is already beginning its descent when the Doctor steps foot outside the Capitol. She glances back at the towering golden archway, half-expecting a curious crowd of Shobogans to be following close behind, but thankfully no one has. Of course, she could have easily taken her TARDIS to the lake from her dream, but with all the time she’s spent cooped up in the Citadel, the opportunity to stroll through vast fields of red grass by herself seems too nice to pass up. 

Her trek along the dirt footpath is mostly solitary; the only other Gallifreyan she encounters is a Shobogan farmer who tips his hat to her before returning to watering his fields, green and yellow sprouts just barely peeking out from the soil. Other than the occasional bird call from a grove of trees in the distance, there’s nothing to disturb the serenity of empty red fields that stretch all the way to the distant mountain ranges. The peace and quiet makes for a nice change, she tells herself.

For the first five minutes, anyway.

As if sensing its mother’s restlessness, the baby delivers two sharp kicks to draw her attention. “At least I always have you for company,” she laughs, pressing a hand to her stomach. “You’re probably the only person in the universe who has to listen to me talk all day.”

Yet despite her captive audience, the Doctor doesn’t quite know what to say, and when she finally does, her voice is surprisingly soft, like her head is floating miles away in the stratosphere. “I wish I could tell you what kind of life you’re going to have, little one. All this - Gallifrey, the Shobogans, you - it's... it's been a surprise for both of us. Your father and I aren’t exactly known for being domestic, after all. Even with all that’s left for us to do on Gallifrey, there’s still a whole universe calling. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to tune it out. I am trying, you know, but I was always more in favor of breaking rules and running away than staying still and upholding them. Don’t know how a madwoman in a box like me keeps getting put in charge of an entire planet.”

As she looks out over the silver-capped mountains, however, a wistful smile crosses her face. “I’m glad we were able to bring it back, though. I’m glad you’ll get to see it. And if you’d like, we can show you so much more. A whole shining universe, filled with music and madness and laughter and danger and hope. So much hope.”

A gentle hum in the back of her mind tells her that the child is listening, so she carries on telling tales of the universe, sometimes spinning together half a dozen half-remembered adventures. Anyone passing by would find her incomprehensible, but the child, only sensing its mother’s exuberance, psychically projects nothing but contentment and warmth.

Before she knows it, her rambling stories have carried her through the red grasslands and led her into the heart of the silverwood forest. Unlike her dream, the welcoming light of day reveals the bellum flowers strewn along the path and the silverbanded flutterwings that buzz from tree to tree, their bodies shining like pieces of iridescent cellophane against the dark oak. The forest is still quieter than she remembers, but the distant scurrying of cobblemice or the occasional squeal of broakir are comforting promises of the lifeforms that will continue to return from the brink of destruction. 

When she finally reaches the lake, it’s quiet and tranquil, unnervingly so. Daisies and Flowers of Remembrance dot the rim with yellow and white, while fallen silver leaves float upon its surface. A gentle breeze ruffles the Doctor’s hair and sends the tiniest of ripples across the water, but within moments, the water is as still as glass. 

“Why here?” she whispers to her child. “What did you want to show me?”

She waits, but the connection has gone cold. 

Swallowing a nervous lump in her throat, the Doctor carefully approaches the shoreline. _This is my home,_ she reminds herself. _I’ve endured hell to get it back, and I’m not letting go of it now. If there is a darkness coming, I’ll be the one to fight it._

Then the Doctor leans over the shoreline and stares into the depths of the water.

* * *

“Hey Yaz, how are those scans coming along?”

Yaz looks down at her scanner, a silver-coated remote with tiny green buttons and a bright green holographic display screen. “Data from the west quadrants are almost uploaded,” she reports, passing the scanner over to her colleague, a dark-skinned young man with dimples and frizzy brown hair. 

His hazel eyes dart across the rows of text, switching from English to Gallifreyan the moment his hand touches the scanner, and lets out a low sigh. “All quiet on the western front. Ready to head back?”

“Sure, Von,” she says, making little attempt to hide her eagerness. The weekly scans of Low Town for air quality and radiation levels are her least favorite part of being a patrol scout; with all the rubble and bombed-out buildings, it feels too much like walking through a war zone. Which of course, she reminds herself, is because it was one not too long ago.

Von’s assured her in the past that only Time Lords are capable of telepathy, but somehow, he seems to know what she’s thinking anyway. “It’s just not right to abandon the town like this,” he says bitterly while gazing up at the setting suns glinting off the newly restored done of the Citadel. “Maybe we don’t have crystal spires or shiny fountains to piss in, but this was our home. It doesn’t deserve to lie ruined like this.”

“I’m sure your home will get rebuilt eventually,” says Yaz, a bit half-heartedly.

Von scoffs. “Yeah, maybe, once we’re done rebuilding _theirs_. Sorry,” he adds after a moment’s pause. “I know you’re friends with the Doctor.”

“It’s alright,” she assures him. It’s not the first time she’s heard him voice these complaints, and each time, it becomes a little bit harder to fall back into her typical habit of singing the Doctor's praises. Why _hadn’t_ she ordered the reconstruction of the Shobogans’ homes first? Had it just never occurred to her that the Shobogans might prefer their old residences over a cushier standard of living within the Citadel? Did she even think to ask?

When Yaz blurts out her question, it feels like a great weight has been tugged out of her lungs, leaving her ever so slightly lightheaded. “Why put the Time Lords in charge?”

Von stops in his tracks and raises an eyebrow at her. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, why is everyone okay with listening to the Doctor and the Master? I get they’re Time Lords and all, but that shouldn’t make them better than everyone else.”

Von shrugs, the setting suns casting long shadows across his face. “Well, the Doctor was President of Gallifrey before this all started,” he explains as they resume walking, their boots kicking up ashes and red sand with each step. “Fat lot of good that did us when she ran away from Gallifrey and left us on our own, of course,” he grumbles.

“She did _what_?”

“She does have a historical precedent for doing that, you know. Man, you _really_ have no idea who she is, do you?” he comments, casting Yaz a sideways glance. “The Renegade, the Oncoming Storm, the Doctor of War? None of that rings a bell?”

“She never mentioned it,” Yaz admits sourly.

“Doesn’t surprise me, I guess. I wouldn’t want to dwell on the Time War either, if I were her. Long and short of it is, the Doctor’s a legendary war hero, and she’s not quite as stuck-up as the rest of the Timeys were, so it’s easy for her to make us Shobogans eat out of the palm of her hand. The Master’s definitely not as great by comparison, but they're a package deal now, so I suppose he gets to tag along for the ride.”

Up ahead, they can see one of the sleek metal bridges that stretches across the deep, moat-like chasm that separates the Citadel from the rest of the Capitol. One time, Yaz made the mistake of staring too long into its gaping darkness, the slopes curving into an unseen basin at the base of the Citadel, and it made her stomach twist like a pretzel. Even now, the sight of the chasm sends chills down her spine. Usually unjust governments at least _tried_ to make the unbreachable divide between rich and poor a bit less obvious.

“Doesn’t it feel weird to you, living in… a monarchy, I guess?” asks Yaz. “Like, a proper, functioning monarchy?”

“Not really,” Von answers. “This is how Gallifrey’s always been. Why, what did you expect instead?”

“Dunno, really. The Doctor says you’re one of the most advanced civilizations in the universe, but shouldn’t that at least come with… I don’t know, an election?” 

“Oh yeah? Who would run against the Doctor?” Von laughs. “Or any Time Lord, for that matter? They’ve got _centuries_ of knowledge beyond what we mere mortals can understand. Just wish people would stop expecting them to know _everything_ , you know? I mean, they weren’t even there when the fighting started. They’re just as in the dark as we are.”

Yaz chews the inside of her lip, as if physically forcing her mouth shut makes her silence weigh any easier on her conscience. 

“I do wonder though,” he continues, frequently glancing at Yaz to gauge her reaction, “just how much they _do_ know about what happened. I mean, once they found everyone hiding in the TARDISes, they didn’t bother searching anywhere else for survivors. And yeah, there weren’t any, but we only figured that out after we scanned the cities for life signs. It was like they already knew.”

“Like you said before,” Yaz replies with thinly veiled sarcasm, “they’ve got knowledge and wisdom beyond our understanding.”

“Wouldn’t hurt to give us a clue, then.” Von sighs and watches a flock of trunkike birds soar above the Citadel. “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to come off like a crazy conspiracy theorist. I’m glad it was the Doctor who found us, could’ve done a lot worse than her. I’m just not that thrilled about _all_ the Timeys returning, that’s all.”

“What do you mean? All the Time Lords are dead, aren’t they?” asks Yaz, as she tries and fails to keep her memory from drifting back to all those vacant faces burning away before her eyes.

“Well, we already know there’s a third coming. And once they figure out how to rebuild those Loom things, you’d be daft to think that they wouldn’t want to bring back their own people. Then pretty soon we’ll be kicked out of the Citadel we’ve worked our asses off to rebuild, and things will go back to the status quo.”

He turns to Yaz, expecting a sympathetic response, but her attention is focused solely on a shadowy pinprick in the distance, just outside the border of the Capitol. 

“Can you see what that is, Yaz? Oh, hang on, let me pull out the scanner.”

Von glances down just as the figure on the horizon erupts into fiery golden light. Then, with a loud cry, Yaz takes off running, Von following close behind. 

Yaz quickly outpaces him, though; more than a mile of grassland separates them when he sees Yaz fall to her knees. When he finally catches up, his heart sinks like a stone as his brain processes the unthinkable sight of the Doctor’s unconscious body in Yaz’s lap. Blood drips steadily from a gash in her forehead, watering the red grass with an even darker hue.

“Yaz,” he breathes, hands shaking at his sides. “Oh gods…”

When Yaz looks up at Von, her cheeks are already streaked with tears. “Run,” she tells him, her voice cracking mid-word. “Run and get help.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, "Timeys" is apparently Shobogan slang for Time Lords, according to the TARDIS wiki. :P 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed this chapter and its new characters! Kudos and comments are always appreciated!


	5. Trust Me (I'm the Doctor)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the erratic update schedule, corona depression is real

“Just lift your head a little, cockle, alright?”

The Doctor sighs but acquiesces as Graham wipes away the dried blood from her forehead. “Honestly, I’m fine! It’s just a head wonk, no reason for you lot to panic.”

“We’d just like to make sure, ma’am,” Kathra assures her, passing a handheld brainwave scanner to Reneth who jots down the readings. “The baby’s at a critical stage of development, after all; it’s important to check that everything’s in order.”

“Hate being fussed over,” the Doctor grumbles. Noonday light bleeds through the silk curtains of her bedroom, and the way the light bounces off the ripples in the fabric reminds her of the lake, and the vision she saw there. “I don’t have time to lay here like an invalid,” she insists, pushing herself into an upright position despite a wave of vertigo that washes over her.

“Please, ma’am,” insists Kathra, turning away from Reneth’s notes to place a hand on the Doctor’s shoulder. “We can’t have you making any sudden movements--”

As if on cue, the door crashes open and the Master rushes in like a force of nature.

“Lord Master,” Kathra murmurs under her breath as she and Reneth avert their eyes.

“How is she?” the Master demands of them.

“She’s _fine_ , thank you,” the Doctor snaps. “You’d think that after two thousand years of traveling time and space, people would have a bit more faith--”

“You’re _bleeding_ ,” he realizes when she absently tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. His hands fly to the side of her forehead, searching for any lumps or bruises, before she grabs his wrists and yanks them away.

“Would you relax? Trust me, I’ve had enough people poking and prodding at me today.”

But the fury in the Master’s dark brown eyes would be enough to send an entire army running. “Tell me what’s happened,” he orders in a dangerously low voice, “because if anyone’s laid a hand on you while you’re carrying our child, I swear I’ll--”

“Yes, yes, I’m well aware of how creative you can be when it comes to revenge,” the Doctor cuts in. “But you’ll have to save it, because it was just a fall, okay? I was walking back from the forest near the Great Houses when I had a regeneration drain, and I hit my head on a rock.”

“And why were you there to begin with? Why did you leave the Capitol?”

The Doctor looks over at Kathra and Reneth, their eyes dutifully trained on the floor, and hesitates. “I had to know if the vision was real,” she answers softly.

The Master folds his arms, looking like a flesh and blood incarnation of the imposing Time Lord statues that still tower over the entire Citadel. “So you set out on your own, without informing anyone, without any way to protect yourself, all while you’re four months pregnant? That’s reckless, even for you.”

“It’s what she’s best at, you gotta admit,” Graham adds in an attempt to lighten the mood, but he takes a step back when the Master shoots him a deadly glare.

“I’m not letting you leave the Citadel,” the Master informs her.

“Is that so?” says the Doctor, with a glare that’s just as hostile. “Because in case you’ve forgotten, I’m still technically Lady President. I don’t answer to _you_.”

The Master pounds his fist on the wall, and Kathra jumps with a start. “I don’t care, Theta!” he roars. “I will make sure you’re here where it’s safe, where I can keep an eye on you, since evidently you can’t be trusted to take reasonable precautions on your own.”

“And just how will you manage that?” she demands, tossing aside the blankets and standing to face him head on. “Will you lock me in here? Hypnotize me? Put me in a paralysis field? I thought we were past all that now. I thought we didn’t need vaults anymore,” she adds quietly.

“This is different! Being the Timeless Child doesn’t make you invincible, and you know how dangerous pregnancy is for us. You’ll be experiencing regeneration drains more often now; what if something happens to you? No, I’ll do everything in my power to protect you and our child from harm.”

“Get her cleaned up,” he barks at the medical staff, “and send me a full report on her condition. I’ll check on her myself this evening.” Then the Master stalks out of the room, scarlet robes billowing in his wake.

As soon as the door closes, the Doctor sighs, sits on the bed, and cradles her head in her hands. “Such an arse,” she grumbles.

“He’s just worried ‘bout you, love,” says Graham, who takes a seat next to her. “Grace was always the same with me after a doctor’s visit. Doesn’t mean he’s right to treat you like that, but you have to admit, he’s not the type of bloke to just come out and say he’s afraid. I know it’s hard to stay cooped up in here when you’re used to having the whole universe outside your front door, but you’ve got to give it a try, for him, okay?”

She opens her mouth like she’s ready to argue, but then she purses her lips and lies down again. “Maybe,” she says halfheartedly.

Graham pats her shoulder. “C’mon, Doc, it’s not so bad. How about I pop inside your TARDIS and get you some custard creams?”

"I'm not a child, Graham," she protests. "You can't bribe me with sweets." Yet even as the words leave her mouth, she can't help the smile that curls the edges of her lips.

"Oh, alright, fine. Just make sure you bring the whole box, 'kay?"

* * *

It takes three cups of tea, an entire box of custard creams, and a story of how the Doctor once met Queen Nefrititi on a spaceship before Graham can work up the nerve to ask, “Hey, Doc? What’d the Master mean when he said pregnancy was dangerous for you lot?”

The Doctor’s smile falters as she struggles to find the right words. “Most species experience at least a few complications when it comes to reproduction,” she begins delicately. “For Time Lords, the most… unpleasant side effect of pregnancy is regeneration drain. Since the fetus still needs to develop the biological pathways needed to regenerate on its own, it’ll continuously siphon regeneration energy from the mother to help create them.”

Graham can’t help but grimace. “Doesn’t sound pleasant, Doc.”

“In small doses, it’s completely harmless,” she assures him. “But if the fetus siphons off too much at once, it can trigger a full-blown regeneration, which kills the child in the process. That’s why Time Lords usually forgo natural conception and use Looms instead. Or they used to, at least.” 

The Doctor sighs and reaches for another biscuit. “So I can understand why he’s worried. There’s very little precedent for this situation; there’s no telling what could happen.”

“Are _you_ worried, love?” asks Graham, placing a hand on her shoulder.

“Nah,” says the Doctor with a vague, distracted little smile that can’t quite dispel the mournful look in her eyes. “After all, my… my first wife conceived naturally, you know. It was a pretty crazy decision, and I probably tried to talk her out of it, but she insisted. Said she wanted to give more of herself than just a strand of DNA in a test tube. I’m a bit rocky on the details now, but I do remember how hard those six months were for her. Still, she made it through, and I was so proud of her. Looking back now, I wouldn’t have our first child in any other way.”

“I’m sorry, Doc,” Graham whispers. “She sounds marvelous. Wish I could’ve met her.”

“What do you mean, sorry?” she asks, still smiling in order to mask the slight hitch in her throat. “She died over two thousand years ago, Graham. It’s alright now.”

“Doesn’t make it any easier.”

“You’re right,” she admits. “Some days it feels like just yesterday.”

Graham nods, his eyes misting over. “You know I don’t like bringing it up around the kids, but… some days I miss people telling me how sorry they were to hear about Grace. After a few weeks, I guess people figured I didn’t want to be reminded. As if I don’t think about her every day.” He folds his hands in his lap, but the Doctor still notices how they tremble. “I figure you’d know better than me, Doc, but when people say that time heals all wounds, I just don’t think that’s true. I think… I think you just learn to walk around the hole they leave behind.”

“I wish I could say you were wrong,” the Doctor tells him gently. After a long, somber pause, she shakes her head and laughs. “Imagine if Yaz and Ryan could see us now, just two old folks talking about our wives. Would really kill the cool, rad space aunt vibe I’m going for.”

Graham chuckles. “Yeah, I bet, but you might be digging your own grave if you keep saying things like ‘rad.’ But really,” he adds, “I’m glad you have the Master to lean on now. Not that I can even wrap my head around how your crazy relationship works, but I can tell that whatever you two have, it’s important to you.”

“Thanks, Graham,” she says as she watches him pour her another cup of tea. “That means a lot, really.”

As he hands her the teacup, however, there’s a pensive look on her face that makes him pause. “Got something on your mind, Doc?”

“What? No, everything’s fine!” she exclaims with a forced enthusiasm that Graham’s become good at recognizing. “Was just thinking to myself that Reneth _really_ needs to learn how to brew tea that isn’t so bitter. Did you know, in the Delta Rho Nebula, there’s a planet solely dedicated to tea ceremonies from across the galaxy? And let me tell you, the people there do not take kindly to someone showing up to High Tea uninvited, _and_ with Marie Antionette causing a ruckus after first meeting an Ood. The lungs on that woman, even with a corset….”

“Maybe that was the wrong question,” Graham says kindly. “Lord knows there’s never a dull moment inside _your_ mind, Doc.”

“You’re right,” says the Doctor with a sheepish grin. “Went off on one of my tangents, sorry. It’s just that… yeah, there is something on my mind. And it has to do with the Master.”

Graham raises his eyebrows, but waits patiently for the Doctor to drink her tea. “You remember that dream I told you about earlier?” she asks, fingers curling anxiously around the rim of the cup. “About the lake?”

“The lake you went to today, right? Were you able to find anything wrong with it?”

The Doctor shakes her head. “It was just a normal lake, at least according to the sonic. But when I looked up from the water, I saw the same figure from my vision standing on the opposite side, and… it was him.”

“The _Master_?” he balks. “You saw him there?”

“Not physically,” she clarifies. “It was a psychic imprint, disappeared in a blink. But it was his face, I’m sure.”

Graham leans forward and plants his hands on his knees, as if to physically steady himself. “Okay, so what does that mean exactly? In the dream you had, didn’t he try to drown you?”

“I don’t know,” the Doctor whispers, her downcast eyes impossible to read in the fast-approaching twilight. “The Master wouldn’t hurt me. Not like that, at least.”

“I hate to point this out, but in terms of hurting people, he doesn’t exactly have the best track record, Doc.”

“Things are different now,” she insists. “He usually only tries to kill me because he’s trying to prove some kind of point and wants me to pay attention. And even when he does, it usually doesn’t work. He’s only ever successfully murdered me once, and that was a while ago.”

At the mention of murder, Graham’s eyebrows shoot up his forehead. “I’m gonna slightly withdraw my ringing endorsement for your relationship, Doc,” he says with a nervous chuckle. “Yeah, I’ll grant you that he hasn’t murdered you recently, but what if he’s just playing the long game? What if he’s trying to lure you into a false sense of security, like he did with O?”

“No, Graham, that’s not it. We…” The Doctor’s eyes fall to her hands, clenched tight around the rim of the teacup. “We both know what it means to lose a child. The horror of waking up every day to a world where they’re still gone, it’s something I wouldn’t wish on anyone. He’s done terrible things, I know, but even he has limits. You saw him earlier; he’d do anything to protect our child. We’re so old now; I don’t think either of us could bear to lose another one.”

Graham nods, albeit a little unconvinced. “Okay, so he won’t try to off you until you’ve had the baby. But what about afterwards? Look, I know it’s not a possibility you want to think about right now, but you're the one who said it was a vision from the future.”

“In the dream, I was still pregnant. Don’t know if that means much, though.” Even in the dim lighting, Graham can see her nose scrunch the way it does whenever she’s elbow-deep into solving a problem. “I just _know_ there’s some kind of warning there, but I can’t piece together what.”

Graham reaches over and gently pries the empty teacup from her tense hands before they can shatter it by accident. “Do you reckon asking him about it would be a good idea?”

“He already thinks I’m losing it,” the Doctor sighs. “No, I can figure this out on my own, Graham.”

“How?”

“Aren’t you forgetting that I have unlimited access to an infinite database that spits out prophecies like a gumball machine?” she declares smugly, before swinging her legs out of bed and running a hand through her ruffled hair. “Wanna come along?”

“Well, I think Kathra would have a fit if she found out I abandoned my patient,” Graham jokes as he falls into step behind her. 

"Ah, well, I'm rubbish at being a patient," she laughs. "Remember, Graham O'Brien, you might be Gallifrey's best human nurse-in-training, but no matter what, I'll _always_ be the Doctor."

* * *

Along the way to the Matrix Chamber, they run into Yaz and Ryan, who both regard the Doctor with alarm. “What happened to you today?” shouts Ryan. “Yaz just told me she found you with your head busted open!”

“No time for that now!” she calls over her shoulder, already several feet ahead of them. “Graham can fill you in!”

“No, I can’t,” Graham scoffs. “At least half of what you say goes completely over my head, and that’s on a good day! She’s not dying though, and now we’re headed to that Matrix library to make sure it stays that way, but that’s about all I got.”

“Doctor, can’t this wait until the morning?” asks an exasperated Yaz. “You shouldn’t be moving around like this!”

“Afraid I can’t do that, Yaz. Gotta get some answers, otherwise my head will keep spinning all night.”

“Probably from a concussion,” Yaz grumbles.

When they reach the Matrix Chamber, the Doctor quickly discovers they aren’t alone. Standing in the center of a glowing white circle with his back turned and head bowed, the Master looks oddly small and vulnerable in the otherwise deserted room. His perfect stillness unnerves the three companions; meanwhile, the Doctor bursts into a frenzy of action, racing down the stairs and gripping the Master by the shoulders. The humans wince as she unleashes a barrage of High Gallifreyan that sounds like piercing shards of glass.

Apparently, the sound is enough to elicit a response from the Master as well: with a gasp, his eyes shoot open, though it takes several seconds for them to focus on her face. 

“What in Rassilon’s name are you doing?” she demands, eyes ablaze. “You said you’d be working on the Looms, not trying to hack into the Matrix again! I felt how deep you were just now; you _know_ how dangerous it is to do that for hours by yourself. Your mind can get stuck there permanently, you complete idiot!”

Despite her scowling face, the Master can’t help but flash a wry smile in return. “Never thought I’d live to receive a lecture on caution from the Doctor, of all people. Especially not after today’s little escapade,” he adds in a darker tone. “You’re supposed to be resting; what are you doing down here?”

“I came to check up on you,” she lies. “Had a feeling you’d be here. And it’s a good thing I did, too. Your mind is _fried_.” 

She leads him to the edge of the dais where they both sit down, close their eyes, and press their foreheads together. The three human onlookers can see the Doctor wince upon contact, but she soldiers on, carefully mending the threads of the Master’s mind that are singed and frayed. 

“You don’t need to keep doing this,” she murmurs. “Whatever’s behind those redacted files about the Division, it’s all in the past now.”

“No, it’s not,” the Master argues, though his voice is just as soft as hers. “They tortured you, Theta, made you do things we don’t even know about. We deserve to know the truth.”

The Doctor gently presses a hand to his temple to keep herself steady within the strained fabric of his mindscape. “And we will find out the truth, even if it means turning up every corner of this universe. But we also can’t lose sight of what’s going on right now. Rebuilding the Citadel, helping the Shobogans, having our child. All that needs to come first.”

The Master smirks, but something else glitters darkly behind his eyes. “Is that my Lady President talking?” he asks with a levity that isn’t very convincing. 

The Doctor also thinks back to their row from earlier, and she shakes her head. “Nope,” she replies, cupping his face in her hands. “Just your wife.”

The Master stares at his wife in adoration. “You are so much more than ‘just’ anything, my dear.”

It takes the humans a few moments to notice that the two Time Lords have shifted from telepathy to snogging like teenagers, but when they do, they all cringe and avert their eyes. “Oi, get a room, you two,” Ryan jokes.

The Master shoots daggers into Ryan’s head; meanwhile, the Doctor blushes and scuttles backward like an ungainly crab. He reaches out to steady her just before she can tumble off the edge of the dais, and instinctively places his hands on her stomach. “The baby was unharmed?” he asks.

“Mhmm. Nothing to worry about.” Her eyes flicker to the ground. “But you’re right; I do need to start being more... more _careful_." Her face scrunches up like she's just taken a bite of something bitter. "So if you can promise I won’t find you hacking into the Matrix again without my help, I’ll stay in the Capitol from now on. Just as long as you’re not hovering over my shoulder all the time.”

“Of course, my dear.”

“I mean it,” she warns him as the two of them stand and join the humans. “No more lies, and more games to get my attention, alright? You have it already, believe me.”

“You have nothing to worry about,” he assures her with a gentle smile. “If we are to rule Gallifrey together, we should have nothing to hide from one another. You trust me, don’t you?”

His tone is lighthearted, clearly intended as a joke, but the Doctor can’t help but glance guiltily at Graham before swallowing a lump in her throat. She nods, and then, before the Master can notice her strained smile, she wraps her arms around his neck and buries her face into his shoulder, all while trying to block out the nagging words of her former self.

_Never trust a hug._

“Of course I trust you,” she whispers, in the hope that saying it aloud will make it true.

The Master, who can sense a wave of anxiety cross the Doctor’s mind, isn’t sure if he believes her. However, when he glances up from the unkempt mass of blonde hair that veils her face and locks eyes with Yasmin Khan, he knows for certain that there is one person in this room who will never trust him, not in a million years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Initially, I was going to have that conversation with Graham and the Doctor include all three companions, but then it got out of hand, so I paired it down. I think I'll try to sprinkle more one-on-one scenes like that throughout the fic, since we don't really see a lot of those close interactions in the show.
> 
> I also decided to split this chapter into two parts, so part two is coming later this week. It's a Yaz-centric one, and I'm still struggling with how to write her character as an inquisitive, law-abiding policewoman without making her overbearing, but I think I've found a fair balance. Feedback on her and any of the other characters is always welcome!


	6. Allundriumathrassei

When the Doctor had invited her fam to spend a few months on Gallifrey with her, she did everything in her power to help the three Earthlings feel at home. Part of that included renovating the rooms opposite hers into a replica of an Earth apartment, complete with two bathrooms, a common area, and a kitchenette. It was an incredibly thoughtful gesture, they all agreed, although the more they lived there, the more it became abundantly clear that the architect was in fact an alien, with only a cursory knowledge of human houses in the 21st century.

For instance, their shower head had apparently been purchased in the _31st_ century, and thus was prone to giving automated, unsolicited remarks on the user’s appearance in between firehose sprays of lavender water. Meanwhile, their communal living room had a phonograph that not even Graham was old enough to know how to use, right next to a flatscreen TV that claimed to have over seven thousand channels but always seemed to broadcast Spanish soap operas whenever they turned it on. Yaz was irked, but Ryan found the entire setup hilarious. At least until he started nosing around the kitchen where he found, amidst an array of sleek modern appliances, a sentient toaster that would attempt to bite off the user’s hand at the mere mention of rye bread.

But for all the quirks of their new living space, at least the Doctor had successfully managed to install a functioning Wifi hotspot, which was all that really mattered to Ryan. It meant that he could still keep in touch with his friends on Earth, while also introducing some of his new Gallifreyan friends, who had never even heard of a smartphone before the Doctor came along, to the wonders of social media. Though it had taken Ryan months to convince Hann to post something other than random photos of rocks in their group chat, he’s proud of their progress overall. 

And, truth be told, he’s started to get invested in Aoka’s new Snapchat account.

Ryan taps on her story to find a new picture of her sitting beneath a grove of white-flowered trees and playfully tossing a handful of dark green berries at the person behind the camera, while the same color juice stains her lips and dribbles down her neck. She’s clutching her stomach in the kind of raucous laughter that always makes her green eyes sparkle, and sure enough, the pink flush in her cheeks soon makes its way to Ryan’s face, too. 

_That’s a good look on you,_ he messages her. _The color matches your eyes._

Immediately, Aoka texts back: _Someone’s been looking at my eyes, hmmm? Interesting…._

Ryan mentally facepalms, and sidesteps the question. _Where you at? Never seen those trees before._

 _It’s just outside WQ, used to hang out with my friends here all the time. Figured everything would be dead, but then one of the guys said the_ kassova _berries were back this year. Isn’t that crazy?_

_They look pretty gross ngl. You sure they’re not poisonous or something?_

_Hey, I thought you were just complimenting my eyes! And they taste REALLY good. There’s also a hot spring close by. I can show you sometime!_

He hesitates. He enjoys texting Aoka, but her strong personality is a bit much to handle in-person, not to mention one-on-one. The last thing he wants to do is lead her on.

Still, her persistence is admirable. And, admittedly, not entirely unwelcome. Maybe even a little attractive.

_Yeah, just hmu this weekend mate._

_Sure, ‘mate,’ will do lol. Can’t wait to see my favorite human <3 _

Before he has time to consider the wisdom of his decision, a text from Tibo, asking how his supposed trip to America is going so far, pops up in another app. He’s just about to reply when a quiet sigh from opposite him pulls his attention away from his phone entirely. He looks over at Yaz, slumped over the armrest of their dark purple couch as she blankly stares at the ceiling, and gently prods her in the side.

“You’ve been in a mood all night,” he points out. “What’s going on?”

Yaz straightens up as his voice pulls her out of her musings. “What do you reckon she sees in him?”

Ryan groans and carelessly tosses his phone onto the coffee table. “Ugh, not _this_ again. Look, the Doctor’s weird, okay? We all knew that from the beginning. Who knows what goes on inside her head half the time?”

“He has no redeeming qualities whatsoever,” Yaz continues without acknowledging his response. “He’s arrogant and condescending and has absolutely no regard for anyone other than the Doctor. He’s the exact opposite of her, but for months now, she’s been so… carefree, I guess.”

“Hang on, are you getting on her case because she’s _happy_?”

Yaz waves a hand dismissively. “You know what I mean. It’s like she’s forgotten how many people the Master killed. It’s like she’s turning into a completely different person.”

“Yeah,” says Ryan, rolling his eyes. “Having a kid and running a planet does that to some people.”

“What do you think, Graham?” she asks as he emerges from the kitchen with a steaming mug of cocoa. “How can we keep condoning a mass murderer sleeping with our best friend?”

With an audible sigh, Graham wedges himself between Yaz and Ryan on the sofa. “Yaz, none of us are thrilled about it,” he reasons. “I know for me it’s gotten easier to lie about what the Master did, and I doubt that’s a good thing. But what are we going to do, start shouting the truth in the middle of the street? We promised the Doc we’d give her time.”

“What happens when we leave though? We all want to go back to Earth eventually. Do we just leave them as a happy little family and _trust_ they’ll tell the truth?”

“No, we won’t,” says Graham, “but we can’t do anything drastic until she’s had her baby. If something goes wrong, the Master’s the only one who knows what to do. I don’t like it either, Yaz, but it’s true. Right now, she needs him.”

“She doesn’t _need_ anyone,” she grumbles, crossing her arms. “She’s the _Doctor_. If she can save a handful of planets in one afternoon, she can have a baby on her own.”

Graham sighs and puts a hand on Yaz’s shoulder. “It’s not easy for her to be ‘the Doctor,’ though,” he chides gently. “Come on, you’ve seen her, haven’t you? When she’s standing at the console when she thinks no one’s around, and she looks like she’s about to cry but never does? She’s _lonely_ , Yaz. She’s got us, sure, but in the end, she always has to do things on her own. We can’t help her the same way he can. He’s the last of her people, and they used to be friends; of course they’re going to share a connection. Just… try to see things her way, will you?”

“She’s only alone because of what he did!” Yaz argues.

“Just admit it, Yaz,” Ryan snaps. “You’ve always had a thing for the Doctor, and that’s why this is driving you nuts.”

Yaz’s eyes nearly bulge out of their sockets. “Excuse me?” she demands, standing up to face Ryan head-on. “That isn’t true at all! I’m worried for her as a _friend_ , Ryan.”

“Come now, son, you know that’s not fair—” 

“I’m just pointing out the facts!” Ryan says defensively. “She’s always trying to do something impressive to get the Doctor to notice her, and now she’s mad that she’s noticed somebody else.”

Yaz’s mouth hangs open as she stands at a loss for words. “So between me and the Master, _I’m_ the delusional one? Are you seriously trying to defend him?”

“Look, we all know he’s an arse, but that doesn’t mean _you_ have to be one, too. Would you cut them some slack and at least try to be happy for them? They are having a kid, you know--”

“Oh yeah?” Yaz wishes her calm, collected policewoman voice would kick in around now, but she figures it’s a bit late for reigning in emotions. “Well, personally, I think that kid would be better off if he just dropped dead!”

Silence.

 _Oh shit,_ Yaz thinks. _Shit, shit, shit._

“Ryan, I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking, I just blurted it out—”

Ryan’s eyes, suddenly devoid of all emotion, make Yaz feel impossibly small as he stares her down unflinchingly. “Do you want to know the worst part about losing me mum?” he asks quietly. “It was losing a part of me dad, too. Just when I needed his support the most, he just drifted away from everything. Like he wasn’t even there.” A watery film starts to cloud his eyes, but he angrily blinks it away. “The Master has done terrible things, but at least he’s not abandoning the Doctor or their kid. I’m not saying that makes everything better, but I know how hard it is to stay. How _important_ it is to stay. And I respect him for that.” 

Suddenly, all of Yaz’s indignation melts away at the sound of Ryan’s voice trying not to break. “Ryan, I’m sorry. Please, I’m _so_ sorry.” 

But the way he hangs his head to hide his expression hurts worse than any slap to the face. “Not me you should be apologizing to. If you have a problem with the way the Doctor’s been behaving, then take it up with her, not us. She might hate you for it, but hey, if she’s just another friend, shouldn’t be too difficult, right? ‘Cause clearly you’ve got no problem speaking your mind around your friends.”

Yaz doesn’t stop Ryan from slamming his bedroom door shut with enough force to shake their china cabinet filled with glass frogs they picked up from a flea market in New New York. She looks forlornly to Graham, who gives her a sympathetic smile, the kind that makes his eyes crinkle in that warm grandfatherly way, before pulling her into a tight hug. “It’s alright, Yaz,” he murmurs. “He didn’t mean what he said to you either. The past couple of months haven’t exactly been a walk in the park; we’re all bound to crack under the pressure at some point. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, it’s okay to ask the Doc to take you home. I’m sure she’d understand.”

“No,” says Yaz firmly. “There’s no way I can leave things the way they are. I… I care about her, Graham. I mean, we all do, but… well, it’s not like I actually fancy her or anything, of course, but… it’s complicated, I guess.”

 _Young love never changes,_ Graham can’t help but think with a fond smile. _Guess she really will be the last person to realize the truth, won’t she?_ “Yaz, I think you should try talking to the Doc. You don’t have to sort out everything with her, ‘cause I know there’s a lot that we’re all still trying to unpack, but you’ve gotta let her know you’re feeling this way. And maybe you can get some perspective on where she’s coming from, too.”

Yaz quietly pulls away from Graham and nods her head. “Yeah, I think you’re right. I’ll go see her tomorrow, promise,” she says, running a nervous hand through her hair. “Would you mind checking on Ryan tonight? I doubt he wants to see me right now, but I just want to make sure he’s doing okay.”

“Sure thing, Yaz. Just get some rest, love; we can pick up the broken pieces in the morning.” He pats her on the back, then knocks softly on Ryan’s door before slipping inside, leaving Yaz alone with nothing but a barrage of overlapping thoughts determined to pummel her brain into mush.

 _Do I have a thing for the Doctor?_ is the thought that echoes loudest as Yaz shuffles to the bathroom for an evening shower. She had never considered it in earnest until now. Not because of the Doctor’s gender; even her mum was well-aware that Yaz had played for both teams in the past. It was because the Doctor, for all her outwardly appearances, was undeniably and irrevocably an alien. They just didn’t _think_ the same way at all. Seeing the Doctor’s homeworld should have made her seem more approachable and less otherworldly, but instead, Yaz realizes with a heavy heart as she rummages through the medicine cabinet for the last bottle of her lavender-scented body wash, she’s never felt more apart from the rest of them. Because it seems that even here the Doctor is an outlier, a legendary savior met with awe and reverence wherever she goes, whose past is apparently filled with untold bloodshed. How could she even begin to understand her feelings towards the Doctor when none of them could wrap their heads around _her_?

How could she love someone with so much to hide?

“Ooh, looks like someone’s faceplanted in the middle of a sandstorm today,” the tinny, metallic voice of their showerhead sneers. “Better choose the geyser setting today, sweetheart, ‘cause you’re never gonna get a date looking like that.”

“Shut up, Alexa,” Yaz mutters with a stronger twinge of hurt than usual, before she closes her eyes, slips in her earbuds, and imagines the patter of rain outside her apartment back home.

* * *

“Doctor?”

Setting down her blackboard eraser, the Doctor turns around and greets Yaz with an exuberant grin. “Didn’t expect to see you here, Yaz! ‘Fraid you just missed the end of today’s lecture, though. The Lego Wars of Castrum-19, fascinating stuff. Had to drop in myself at one point; managed to facilitate a planet-wide peace treaty using just a shoelace and fifteen megatons of… pipecleaners....” 

Her voice trails off once she notices Yaz staring quietly at the floor, her mouth pressed into a frown. “Something on your mind, Yaz?” she asks, head cocked to one side like an inquisitive puppy.

“Yeah, there is something. Something that’s been on my mind for a while, actually.” Yaz waits a moment until she hears the last of the students leave the amphitheater, before raising her eyes with a look of fierce scrutiny that tells the Doctor whatever Yaz is about to ask, she won’t be able to wriggle out of an answer this time. “If you’ve always had feelings for the Master, then why did you tell us he was one of your oldest friends?”

The Doctor raises a confused eyebrow. “Because he _is_ my oldest friend, Yaz.”

“But you didn’t tell us the whole story. You never even mentioned he was your husband,” Yaz fires back, the mention of the Doctor’s marital status still tasting sour on her tongue. 

“Is one of those descriptions more important than the other?”

When Yaz’s stony expression fails to budge, the Doctor sighs and picks up a piece of chalk. “Cultural lesson, Yasmin Khan!” she announces cheerily, as she starts drawing a series of messy circles and interlocking lines on the board. “Big oversight on my part, bringing you to my home planet without even explaining the local language. I typically rely on the TARDIS translation circuits to get around the language barrier, but even then, certain bits still get lost in translation.”

Yaz’s crossed arms fall to her sides as the hypnotic power of the Doctor’s lecturing takes hold, momentarily distracting her from her indignation. “What do you mean? You use the translation circuit, too?”

“‘Course I do!” the Doctor replies. “I’m speaking Gallifreyan to you right now, Yaz, like I always have.”

“Don’t you understand English, though?”

“Sure, I understand it,” she says as she starts erasing a crude yet admittedly endearing sketch of a cat vomiting a rainbow, in order to make more space on the chalkboard. “Doesn’t mean I’m that good at it. Verb tenses always trip me up. Gallifreyan doesn’t have them at all, you see. The past and the future always have a nasty habit of blending together on Gallifrey. And that,” she concludes, brushing the chalk off her palms, “was your first lesson in your crash course of Gallifreyan 101!” 

Yaz regards the three Gallifreyan words on the board with renewed suspicion. “I appreciate it, Doctor, but if you’re trying to distract me from my question, you’re gonna have to try harder than this.”

The Doctor’s smile falters ever so slightly, and a pang of guilt squirms uncomfortably in Yaz’s stomach. “I’m not, Yaz, I promise. Just humor me for a bit, ‘kay?” 

Yaz can’t help but crack a smile at that. “When don’t I?” she murmurs resignedly, but with affection, too.

Emboldened by Yaz’s response, the Doctor taps the first Gallifreyan word, rubbing chalk into the hem of her crimson robe in the process. “When you first start reading Gallifreyan, it helps to think of each word like a clock,” she begins. “You start at the top and read around the edge of the encompassing circle, sounding out each syllable, until you wind up back where you started. But in reality, no one reads words in chunks like that. In order to get the meaning of Gallifreyan, you have to look at the word in its entirety, without getting bogged down in searching for a ‘start’ or an ‘ending.’” 

“Take an everyday word like ‘flower,’ for instance. You know what a flower is, how it grows and how it dies. But when you actually picture a flower in your mind, you only imagine one part of its life, when it’s all blooming and flower-y. Its time as a seed, a sprout, a shriveled husk, that all gets split up in English. In Gallifreyan, though, you can convey all of that time in a single word.”

Yaz nods along patiently, while her eyes try to make sense of the intricate interlocking circles and lines in front of her. “Okay. But what if you just want to talk about a certain part of a flower’s life?”

“Oh, you can put an accent on the word at a specific point in time. Here, like this.” The Doctor darkens the lines of a circle and three lines at the apex of the larger circle. “There’s your equivalent word for seed, for instance. The same holds true for a word like ‘Time Lord,’” she continues, tapping on the next circle. “Thirteen syllables for thirteen faces. Of course, I’m something of an anomaly now. Not sure where my face falls in the lineup anymore, so I usually default to accenting the first syllable. Much less depressing to put myself at the start of something than at the end.”

Yaz traces her finger around the circumference of the final, most intricate word on the board. “So I guess this is the word you use for the Master?”

“Gold star for Yaz,” the Doctor beams. “ _Allundriumathrassei_ , for short. It has many meanings in English, but the closest translation would be soulmates, I reckon. It describes the enormity of a relationship that lasts a lifetime, from first sight to parting words. Marriage is just one temporal point within that word; it doesn’t exclude the friendship that came before. The Master started out as one of my oldest friends, and that’s what he’ll always be.” Her gaze drops to the ground as she anxiously twists a lock of hair. “I never intended to hide a part of my past from you, Yaz. From any of you.”

Yaz isn’t too sure about that last part, but the contrite look on the Doctor’s face makes her set her skepticism to the side for the time being. “I think I follow that,” she says, which is about as truthful as she can get when it comes to her feelings on the Doctor’s enigmatic past. “So if that’s the case, why would you still call each other by how you were in the beginning? Surely a lot of things have changed since then, right?”

Most times, it’s hard for Yaz to keep in mind the fact that her alien best friend who likes to stick her head out of car windows and eats nothing but sugary biscuits has actually lived for thousands of centuries. But when the Doctor looks up at her with a sad, heartbroken little smile plastered on her face, Yaz can finally see, with frightening clarity, each and every one of the Doctor’s years written in her eyes.

“Oh, things have changed, all right. In fact, they never really stop.”

* * *

Nearly a week later, Yaz still finds herself pondering the pain behind those words as she walks along the riverbank-turned-graveyard at twilight, in what has become a near-daily ritual for her by this point. Although she and Ryan have reconciled, things between them are still awkward to say the least, so she often spends her time taking long, lonely walks outside the Capitol, in the hopes that the vast crimson landscape will morph into a familiar one, that the subtle wrongness of the gravity beneath her feet will one day feel easy and light.

She hasn’t been entirely alone, though. A few times she’s encountered a young farmer who listens to her vent her frustrations with a sympathetic ear before tipping his straw hat and returning to his fields nearby. Though he never says much, the understanding in his deep brown, nearly black eyes brings immense comfort, and Yaz hopes she might run into him again tonight.

As it turns out, she does run into someone, but instead of a weathered, dark-skinned Shobogan man standing along a curving trail of yellow flowers, it’s a petite young Shobogan nurse whom Yaz has encountered many times whenever she’s had to break up a particularly nasty street brawl during her patrols. The woman stands alone, a flower tucked behind her ear and both hands clasped to her chest, and at first glance Yaz mistakes it for prayer. But as Yaz draws nearer, she notes a certain hardness, a fire in the woman’s eyes as she overlooks the sea of yellow that seems far from reverence.

Yaz clears her throat hesitantly, uncertain if she’s intruded on a private moment. “Er, Reneth, right? Are you okay?”

Reneth turns to Yaz slowly, calmly, almost like she’s been expecting company. She takes a moment to consider the question carefully before answering, “Yes, Yasmin, I suppose I am fine. Why do you ask?”

The detached, clinical smoothness of her voice unnerves Yaz. “What are you doing all the way out here?”

“Same thing as you, I imagine,” she shrugs. “Thinking. Remembering.” Her gaze returns once again to the hundreds of golden flowers, still as healthy as the day Yaz helped plant them. 

“It seems strange,” she whispers, lifting her eyes to the pale white stalks swaying gently like ghosts in the nearby fields, “to see things growing over there, when so much has died right here beneath us. My mother, my father, my three younger brothers, they’re just fertilizer now. I couldn’t even tell you where to find their bones.”

“I’m so sorry,” says Yaz. It’s not just condolences: she _is_ apologizing for something, but she isn’t sure of exactly what. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“I heard you helped bury them.” She slips the flower from her hair and holds it in her slightly shaking hands. “My mother always wore these pink house slippers with little kassova blossoms embroidered on them. They were a gift from my grandmother. Maybe you saw them when…?” She hangs her head, obscuring her face in her midnight black hair.

The doused flicker of hope in Reneth’s eyes freezes Yaz’s blood. She probably had her mother’s blood on her hands but never knew, just chucked her body into a pile with the rest. What kind of monster was she? “No, I’m sorry. I don’t remember seeing your mother. There… there were too many people to count.”

“Ah, of course,” says Reneth, just as calmly as before. “That was a silly question of me.”

“I’m sorry,” Yaz repeats, feeling like an idiot for saying it. After all, it’s not like a weak apology would bring Reneth’s family back from the dead. 

Reneth tucks the Flower of Remembrance back safely behind her ear. “Don’t feel sorry for me, Yasmin. Gallifrey is no longer an orphan planet, but we’re still living on a planet of orphans. This loss, it’s nothing special. No reasonable person could fault you for not remembering.”

“Besides,” she adds, turning her attention to the setting suns that set the distant mountains ablaze, “you were just following the wishes of the Time Lords. Nobody can fault you for that.”

“But that doesn’t make it right!” Yaz bursts out, months of repressed frustration at last making itself heard. “I don’t care what traditions used to be here; they don’t get to choose what’s right and wrong. They need to be held accountable for their actions like everyone else.”

Yaz expects shock, maybe even outrage for challenging the insurmountable cultural divide between Gallifreyans. Instead, Reneth fixates on Yaz with a look of intense scrutiny, before saying in a deadly serious tone, “Are you willing to stand by that, Yasmin Khan?”

The answer slips out before Yaz has time to consider what she may have just found herself walking into. “Yes. I am.”

“They said you could be persuaded, but I wasn’t sure. You’re too close to her, is what I argued. But I can see what they meant now. You might be just the person we need.”

Yaz takes a step back. “Woah, hang on, what on Earth are you talking about right now?”

For the first time, Yaz sees Reneth smile, forming a crack in her cold, professional demeanor. “You’re not on Earth anymore, Yasmin Khan,” she reminds her. “You’re on Gallifrey now. And if we can gain your trust, you might just be its best hope.”

“Wait,” says Yaz, eyes wide in understanding. “Are you talking about an uprising? An actual uprising? Against... against the Time Lords?”

She nods, then offers a Yaz a pollen-coated hand that glitters like starlight.

“Anyone can _talk_ about a revolution. Whether or not we can _do_ something, Yasmin Khan, that all depends on you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To anyone familiar, my headcanon for Gallifreyan is like Chinese characters with the radicals arranged in a circle to create a pictogram/ideogram, and each radical has its own pronunciation. (Just imagine the horror if that's how Chinese actually worked.) Maybe it makes sense, maybe it doesn't, but either way I'm a nerd for languages :)


	7. A Fragile Peace

“This used to be my home,” Reneth prefaces as she leads Yaz across the threshold of a crumbling stone hut along a row of identical rust-colored structures, with barely an inch of breathing room between one wall and the next. There is no door, just a singed, tattered cloth to block out the sand and grit. A patchwork of tin, thatch, and plastic tarps covers the house, but to call it a roof seems too generous, Yaz thinks. This whole area of Low Town reminds her more of pictures of slums in Mumbai than of an advanced alien civilization half a universe away from home. 

“This isn’t even the worst of it,” says Reneth, noticing Yaz’s hesitation. “It still has four walls intact, which can hardly be said for the rest of the quadrant.” 

When Yaz steps instead, her eyes immediately lock onto the scorch marks on the floor and the scratches on the walls, and she thanks whatever gods that might have followed her here for the dim twilight shadows that hide the rest of the wreckage in shadows. With most of the furniture reduced to heaps of ashes, it’s impossible to tell what this room might have been originally used for, but given that it’s about half the size of Yaz’s room in her family’s apartment back on Earth, it’s appallingly cramped whatever the circumstances. After months of dwelling within the crystalline walls and high-vaulted corridors of the Citadel, this level of poverty makes Yaz furious. If the Doctor had seen this kind of slum on one of their adventures, she would have put a stop to it. So why let it carry on outside her own doorstep?

Reneth crosses the room in just four strides and pushes aside another makeshift door, revealing a group of four Shobogans huddled on the floor and whispering furiously among themselves. When they spot Yaz, however, their eyes go wide, like startled children caught in some devious act. 

Wondering if it’s too late to back out, Yaz briefly looks to the door, but the tension in the air freezes her muscles. For a moment, nobody moves.

A scraggly teenager with floppy black hair and big grey eyes looks to Reneth in awe. “Oh my god,” he breathes. “You actually did it.”

“Oh my god, you actually did it,” echoes a Shobogan girl, sounding far less enthused. Her frosty blonde hair and pointed cheekbones remind Yaz of an elf from a movie marathon with her sister, except she’s pretty sure those elves never scrunched up their noses in disgust like her. “Are we going to send invitations to the Time Lords themselves next?”

“Come on, Galatea, I’ve told you she’s not like that,” says a familiar Shobogan sitting cross-legged next to her.

Yaz’s eyes widen incredulously. “Von? What the hell are you doing here?”

Von grins sheepishly as he runs a hand through his frizzy brown hair. “Well, I’m kind of here because of you, Yaz. I’ve always been frustrated with how the Timeys have treated us, but until I started talking to you, I never considered that there was another way of living. And it turns out there are others who feel the same way.”

“Oh yeah? And just how many more people are in on this, anyway?” asks Yaz. “How big is this ‘revolution,’ exactly?”

The fourth Shobogan, a middle-aged man with rugged features and crystal blue eyes, gives Yaz a fatherly smile. “Just a handful of others, Miss Khan; these are just the ones we could gather on such short notice. Not that we’re terribly organized to begin with, mind you. ‘Revolution’ is a rather strong word to describe what we’re hoping to achieve.”

“Well, I don’t think so,” Reneth interjects coldly. “I wouldn’t waste my time on anything less.”

“So what exactly are you all trying to achieve then?” asks Yaz, trepidation hammering in her chest. 

Von pats a dust-coated patch of the earthen floor next to him. “Take a seat, Yaz. This might take a bit of explaining.”

Yaz, however, stands her ground. “Not until I get some answers,” she demands, crossing her arms over her leather jacket. “Because if you lot are trying to murder them or something, I’m having none of it, you understand?”

“Do we look like assassins to you?” asks Galatea, arching one eyebrow. “Besides, it’s not like we’d have any luck with that. They do regenerate, after all; that’s rather the point of them, unfortunately. Honestly, Reneth, you could’ve thought to clue her in a little on the way.”

“Didn’t want to discuss it in the open,” Reneth responds coolly, as she takes a seat directly opposite Galatea. “Besides, Von has more patience for explaining things. I doubt she even knows what Looms are.”

“Wait, this is about the Looms? But they were all destroyed on Oblivion Day, weren’t they?”

“You should give Yaz more credit, Reneth,” Von says with a smug grin, before turning his attention back to the human. “Yes, Yaz, the Looms were destroyed; however, we understand that the Doctor and the Master are trying to create new ones, in the hopes of producing a new generation of Time Lords. We don’t know what their intentions are, but even if they do mean well, given everything the Shobogans have suffered under their rule in the past, we... we just can’t risk the Time Lords coming back." He anxiously twists the hem of his tan shirt like a frightened child, not a hardened revolutionary. "It would mean the end of what few freedoms we have now.”

Yaz’s expression softens. She recognizes the desperation in Von’s face, and she knows what it means to cling to dignity in a world that constantly threatens to take it away. Holding her breath during an airport security check, enduring terrorist jokes at school, keeping a lid on her anger as drunks hurled racial slurs her way. In a way, becoming a police officer had been a way for Yaz to secure freedoms for herself and others like her, to prove that the system could change given enough effort from the right people, but there wasn’t even the pretext of equal rights here. These were people, Yaz understood, who were willing to fight for themselves because they knew that no one else would.

Still, she can’t help but ask, “How can you be sure that things would go back to the way they were? I mean, don’t you think things are different now that the Doctor’s in charge?”

“She’s been in charge before,” the younger boy pipes up, “and nothing changed then. Besides, it’s not just her anymore, it’s also the Master. And he did things even the Time Lords found appalling. There’s no way we can trust them.” 

“Which again raises the question of why we agreed to lead the Doctor’s human pet straight to us?” Galatea slouches against the wall, coating the back of her white blouse with a film of red dust in the process. “What’s to keep her from spilling everything to her Lady the second we let her leave?”

Yaz isn’t sure if she’s more offended by Galatea mocking herself or the Doctor. Either way, she leans against the doorframe and looks down at her with a glare typically reserved for drunks attempting to smooth talk their way out of a ticket and for the Master whenever he comes within a two-meter radius of her. “Well, have you even considered telling the Doctor? Maybe convince her to leave the Looms alone?”

“I’d like to see _you_ try to tell either of them to let go of the one chance they have to restore their own race,” Galatea scoffs.

Yaz's frown deepens, but she sees her point. “Okay then, so if you don't want to kill them, and some of you are allergic to diplomacy, how are you planning to stop them?” 

“That’s where you come in, Yaz,” says Von. “The Looms were some of the Time Lords’ most heavily guarded secrets. None of us have ever even seen a Loom, much less knows how it works. All the libraries in the Citadel burned to the ground, and even if something managed to survive, it’d be written in Old High Gallifreyan, which no one here knows how to read. And only Time Lords know how to access the Matrix. So if this plan has any chance of working, we’re going to need you to get something for us.”

“Are you at all familiar with a suns dial, Miss Khan?” asks the blue-eyed Shobogan. 

Yaz nods hesitantly. “It’s like a marriage certificate, right? The Doctor and the Master were searching for it on the day we found everyone in the TARDIS hub. I don’t know if they ever found theirs, though.”

“Well, I certainly hope they did, because it’s our last chance of finding the Looms and destroying them for good. You see, Miss Khan, a suns dial isn’t just a shiny piece of metal. It holds memories. Specifically, it safeguards any memories that were key in leading up to their marriage. Keeps that part of the timestreams from getting tampered with, or something along those lines.”

“And you want me to steal it from them,” Yaz says coldly.

“The Master is known to have Loomed at least one child,” Reneth explains. “Maybe the Doctor, too. If it’s a key memory, then we can open it, figure out where the Looms are and how they work, and finally return control of Gallifrey back into the hands of the Shobogans. Only problem is, we need some who can search their room without looking suspicious. I’ve tried it before, in between bringing them tea and pretending to fawn over their horrid baby, but I can only steal a few minutes, and it’s not enough.” Her steely eyes lock firmly onto Yaz’s. “We need your help.”

Yaz looks down at her folded hands and tries to block out the prickly feeling of ten hopeful eyes turned toward her. “You’re asking me to steal from one of my best friends,” she says quietly. 

“It’s a terrible thing to ask,” Von agrees, “but we wouldn’t ask unless it were absolutely necessary.” 

“What happens to you if they find out? The Master might actually kill you, you know?”

Von reaches out to grip Yaz’s hand, and she can feel years of calluses scrape against her skin. “Yasmin, it’s not just the Master we’re afraid of. I know the Doctor is your friend, and I know you want to see only the best in her. Believe me, so do we. Even when the other Time Lords cast her out from their ranks, Shobogans still sang songs about her. The Doctor has done wonderful things for Gallifrey, and for this universe. We owe her our lives ten times over.” 

Von chews his bottom lip as he carefully weighs his next words. “But you need to understand: the Doctor may be wonderful, but that doesn’t always mean she’s good. There are libraries devoted to stories of her wrath; there are planets which only exist in her memories now. If either of them learns of what we’ve told you today, we can only pray that they’ll kill us. They’re both capable of so much worse.”

Yaz jerks her hand away and shakes her head furiously. “No, you’re wrong, I don’t believe you. I don’t know what the Doctor’s past was like, but I know who she is now. She isn’t capable of something like that.”

“She’s a Time Lord, of course she’s capable,” Galatea laughs mirthlessly. “I used to be a personal servant for a Time Lord in Arcadia; I’ve seen what they’re capable of. For all their talk about knowledge and enlightenment, it doesn’t mean they’re above kicking you to the ground if you’ve frayed a hem on their robes.” Her nails dig crescent moons into her palms until the pale skin begins to turn red. “I watched a Time Lord kill my best friend just because she was sick and asked to go home. Just snapped his fingers and left her brain dead; the other Timeys didn’t even blink. Our lives mean that little to them, so don’t you dare try to tell me that we should put our trust in her. We can’t trust any of them. For generations we have suffered for them, growing their food and building their monuments and enduring their pompous shit with a smile, because we believed they were our protectors, but the day we needed them most, they died just like we did. It’s time we realize that the universe is better off without them.”

Galatea turns to the wall before anyone can see the hot, angry tears on the verge of spilling from her eyes. Yaz looks around at the other Shobogans, watching Galatea cry with sympathy, and knows that each of them must carry similar stories of pain and abuse. If only I had the courage to ask.

“I… I…” Yaz digs her nails into the dirt floor to keep her hands from shaking, as the knowledge of their misery shoots through her veins like fire. “I can’t do it. I just can’t. I’m sorry, but she… she’s lonely, and she’d do anything to bring her people back, and I just… I don’t know if I can betray her trust like this.” Even though at the moment, it’s Yaz who feels betrayed. While they were terraforming Gallifrey, the Doctor would always talk about skipping school and running through crimson fields. Not once did she mention the countless generations of slaves buried underneath. She glances over at the Flower of Remembrance in Reneth's hair, just one in a sea of thousands, and her stomach does backflips in her gut.

The older Shobogan sitting next to her places a hand on her knee. “Why don’t you think it over, dear?” he suggests. “We’ve put a terrible burden on you; it’s alright to feel uncertain. If you can go a week without telling anyone what you’ve heard here and return to us with your answer, we’d be tremendously grateful.”

The rest of the Shobogans nod in agreement. “Think it over, Yasmin,” says Reneth, “but be careful. Despite what you may think, Time Lords are dangerous beings. The thing about being immortal is, it’s easy to forget how easily the rest of us break.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter ended up being kind of long, so I split it into two parts. I'm so excited to finally get to the plot!


	8. Our Love Is God

“I think that was the gentlest you’ve ever been with me.”

The Master chuckles as their legs intertwine beneath the bedsheets. “Is that really such a surprise?”

“Well, it’s a nice change of pace from those days in the Vault,” the Doctor replies, resting her head on his exposed chest. “I suppose I’m just used to you trying to push me to my breaking point.”

“Was I too careful?” 

She shakes her head, messy blonde hair scattered across her bare shoulders. “No, I’m glad you were gentle with me. It was just different, that’s all. I mean, it’s not like you blow up planes and push me off towers because you’re trying to be careful. It’s a side of you that I don’t see all that much.”

“Perhaps I should bring it out more often, then.” He wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her closer, though not as close as he could a few weeks ago. “We probably won’t be able to do this again for a while, though,” he murmurs, feeling the weight of her stomach press against him. “You’ll need to spend this month resting as much as possible.”

“Don’t remind me,” she groans. “Being pregnant is so _boring_ sometimes, I can hardly stand it.”

“And here you were just a regeneration ago telling me how curious you were about being a woman,” he says with a smirk.

“Yeah, well, Missy made it look easy. All dresses and lipstick and high heels. Never had to deal with anything like this. Not that I hate it,” she amends quickly. “It’s wonderful to feel so close to our child, but sometimes it makes me feel like a stranger in my body all over again. It’s like I finally settled into a new house, and then someone else moved in and shuffled around all the furniture.”

The Master feels her curl into his side as his fingers trail down her back, and he wonders how she can feel so disconnected from herself when each curve of her new body already feels so familiar to him. Exploring their new regenerations has always been one of the few treasured rituals in their relationship, but this one is certainly one of his favorites by far. Too small to contain the enormity of who and what she is, leaving sunshine and fire bleeding through the pores in her skin whenever they touch. How ironic that the only one who seems completely oblivious to its beauty and strength is her.

“I can’t imagine the feeling,” he murmurs, “but all the discomfort will quickly pass, my dear. It may feel strange for you now, but to me, there is nothing more natural than knowing you will soon be the mother of our child.”

At that, the Doctor smiles wistfully, and it’s like watching the sun thaw a millennium's worth of snow and frost. “We used to dream about something like this, didn’t we? After the wedding, having a child was all we could talk about.” She gazes up at him through her eyelashes, so soft and vulnerable after centuries of fury and revulsion thrown his way. “What do you think our child will be like?”

“Certainly a troublemaker, knowing us,” he laughs as he runs a hand through the Doctor’s hair. “I never understood the tendency for 21st-century humans to give their children leashes, but perhaps it’s something we should consider if we want to keep the Citadel intact. Though I’m sure they’ll still manage to accidentally crash a TARDIS into the dome at some point before their twelfth regeneration.”

“Twelfth regeneration,” she echoes quietly. “Right. So… so then you suppose it’ll be like you... and not like me?”

The Master freezes. Of course. That nagging detail, so easy to ignore on a planet of people who so readily call her a Time Lady, despite the fact that she isn’t, really. Or, at least not _just_ a Time Lady. Despite having successfully conceived a child together, she exists as a species unto herself. Perhaps their child will, too.

“Oh, I certainly hope it’ll be like you,” he quips, even as his hearts threaten to shatter. “Immortality would be rather lonesome for you otherwise.”

“No,” the Doctor insists fiercely, throwing her arms around him as if she could ward off his inevitable death through sheer force of will. “Don’t you _ever_ say something like that. Dying is like the common cold for you at this point. If nothing else, I’ll give you as much regeneration energy as you need, for as long as we’re alive.”

 _And remind me time and time again how my very existence is owed to you,_ the Master thinks bitterly, though he makes sure those feelings don’t register on his face. Instead, he merely placates her by saying, “Yes, of course, Theta. Don’t trouble yourself over it at all. I still have half a dozen stolen regenerations left, enough to last me millennia.”

Still, the Doctor clings to him like one might a tree branch dangling above a raging river. She worries she might float away forever if she doesn’t. Drifting through a lonely universe, the last of their kind, together in their isolation. Even now, the lack of any telepathic background noise on Gallifrey serves as a painful reminder of that reality. Just the thought of a universe without the Master is enough to crush the air from her lungs.

“We won’t be alone for much longer,” he tells her quietly, picking up on her surface-level thought projections. “Today I finally cracked how to rebuild the Looms. Just a few gamma crystals charged with your regeneration energy, and we can have as many Time Lords as we wish.”

“You did?” The news should elate her, she knows, but instead she feels a creeping numbness overtake her limbs. “I didn’t think it would be possible.”

The Master raises an eyebrow. “I thought we agreed this is what we wanted.”

“Of course I wanted us to _try_. But it’s always been a dream until now. A _fantasy_. I don’t know if I can handle the reality of it. They hurt so many people,” she murmurs as she looks out at the newly restored glass dome, still unaccustomed to seeing it without a ring of smoke and fire. “The fabric of time is more fragile without them, but with all the pain they caused, are we right to bring them all back?”

The Master brushes a hand across her face, coaxing those hazel eyes to turn back to him. “You know that’s not what we’re doing,” he reprimands her gently. “We can’t bring any of them back from the dead, and with all the pain they inflicted upon you, I wouldn’t want them back. But don’t you see, Theta? A people born from someone’s pain can’t help but inflict pain in turn. These Time Lords will be different, because they’ll be born out of something better than that. They'll be born from _us_.”

“Yes, from two Time Lords who have gone back and forth on the genocide of their own people the same way other couples argue about which weekend film to see,” she replies coldly. “You can’t tell me that’s any better.”

“Yes, I can,” he insists. “ _You’re_ better, Doctor. You can fight it all you like, but you were born to lead, to _rule_ this planet. You are wise, and gentle, and beloved, and everything Rassilon and the High Council were not.”

The Doctor sighs; behind his honeyed words she can see in his eyes that all-too familiar lust for power. “I’ve never wanted to rule anybody,” she reminds him. “I just wanted to help these people because there’s no one else who can. It’s a _temporary_ arrangement. After everything’s settled down, I’ll….”

“You’ll what? Run away again? Gallifrey’s your home, my love. There’s no one left to tell us it isn’t. In six weeks’ time we’ll have a child, conceived and born on a planet that by all accounts shouldn’t even exist. Just the start of a brand new Gallifrey.” The Master takes her hand and cradles it to his chest like it’s made of glass. “Don’t settle for leading a couple hundred Shobogans on the brink of destruction. Lead the _Time Lords_.”

“This isn’t what I set out to do when I said I’d help you,” she scolds him. “This isn’t what we agreed to.”

“You wanted to save the Shobogans, which I did not deny you, my dear. But now that I want to save our own race, you want to pass it up?” A familiar anger flares in his eyes, like the heat of two suns colliding. “Why even have a child if it will die the last of its kind?”

The Master jerks away from her and sits up, swinging his legs off the bed to stare broodingly at the pale silver moon. “I thought you wouldn’t feel the need to run away this time,” he adds quietly, the rage dissipating from his voice as quickly as it came. “I never know what I need to do to make you stay.”

The Doctor’s expression softens, and she goes to sit beside him. “You know that’s not what I meant,” she murmurs as she wraps a blanket around her chest. “I _want_ you, Koschei, I always have. And of course I want the Time Lords back.”

“But?”

“Are we really the ones to do it? I don’t exactly have a good track record being President of Gallifrey. If we want to get this right, we’d have to devote ourselves for centuries, and you know how I am. Nearly five months pregnant now, and I still can’t manage to stay still. The TARDIS, the universe, it’ll pull me away eventually.”

“You could stay for me,” he grumbles. “You did it before.”

“I was supposed to watch over you for a thousand years, and I couldn’t even manage that.” Her hands slide across his shoulders, marked by faint scars she still hasn’t had the courage to ask him about. Her fault, her gut tells her. His panicked face when she left him in Paris is just one of a thousand images that haunts her weary mind, alongside torments that even she can’t begin to imagine. “I made a promise to watch over you, and I failed. Missy died in my care because I was too reckless, too desperate to wander the universe when I should have been protecting you.”

“That wasn’t your fault,” he murmurs, slipping his hand in hers. “You wanted me to become someone I wasn’t ready for. We both did. I just wish you had trusted me more. Every time I made progress, you would just pull away like you were punishing me.”

“I _want_ to trust you,” she whispers without a care for the suppressed hurt that bleeds into her voice. “I’ve trusted you over and over, but you’ve betrayed that trust every time.”

They sit in silence together, the Last of the Time Lords and the Other Last of the Time Lords, as half an eternity of history weighs them down. “Missy didn’t betray you,” the Master finally admits. “She wanted to go back and stand with you. Saxon just got to her first.” He blinks furiously to hide the wet sheen in his eyes. “She… she died hoping you would come back for her.”

The Doctor’s eyes widen. “Is that true? Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“It… It’s all in the past now,” he says quickly. “I thought it’d be better to focus on the future instead.” Then he reaches out and cups her cheek with one hand and her stomach with the other. “The old Time Lords abused their power, but it doesn’t need to be that way with us in charge. Just think, Doctor. Nonintervention, the perseveration of the timelines, the pursuit of knowledge. Turns out those ideals were just talk at the Academy, but we can make them the heart of Time Lord society.” The Master breaks into a grin, all warm and starry-eyed, and it’s an expression the Doctor hasn’t seen since she first met that mesmerizing boy at the Academy with nothing but raw brilliance and a universe of potential before him. “We can make it our _home_.”

The Doctor can’t fathom how they’ve arrived at this point, Gallifrey’s two most notorious rebels discussing the possibility of a joint presidency, but she’d be lying if she said the idea didn’t excite her. On lonely nights as she felt the TARDIS drift through empty space, she would sometimes dream of something just like this. A place in the universe where they could live in peace together, just as they had once planned so many regenerations ago. A place she wouldn’t have to keep running from in her little blue box. A place to finally land.

“I suppose it’d be a little arbitrary to stop at one Time Lord,” she decides. “But we go slow, okay? No legions of Time Lord soldiers ready to conquer the universe. If there’s one thing you and I can agree on, it’s that Gallifrey doesn’t need another war.”

“Of course,” the Master nods.

“And we consult with the Shobogans once we get the Looms up and running. They deserve a say in this, too.”

“Fine, if it’s that important to you.” Without breaking eye contact, he reaches out and kisses her hand. “Any other requests, my dear?”

The Doctor pauses. “Promise me this time is for real,” she whispers. She gazes at her husband, still miraculously alive after all this time, and her voice cracks with longing. “I want to do my best to stay, but you need to be strong enough to keep me grounded. We both need to be strong enough to keep each other in check.”

“Nearly five months ago I promised I would stand with you no matter what,” he reminds her. “That promise hasn’t changed.” He lets go of her hand as dark clouds pass over his expression. “I just wish you would start trusting me more. There’s something wrong, I know it, but you’re not letting me in.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” she insists a little too forcefully. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

The Master wilts at her words, making him resemble a moody teenager rather than an ancient creature from the oldest civilization in the universe. “You still keep your mental defenses up when we’re having sex. Not to mention the amount of sex we’re having. You keep saying it’s hormones, but it’s those nightmares, isn’t it? You’re scared of going to sleep.”

“Yeah, well, what else is new?” she snaps, turning away from him. “If it’s not… _that_ nightmare, it’s seeing Gallifrey on fire. Or it’s burying those bodies in the riverbed and forgetting which one of us put them there. Or a thousand other horrors I’ve had to endure. Besides, I didn’t hear you complaining about the sex before.”

“That’s not the issue, Theta,” he murmurs. “If you would just let me into your mind, I could help you rest.”

The Doctor flops down onto the bed before he can catch a glimpse of her vacant stare as she checks that all her mental blocks are still in place. “I can get to sleep on my own, thanks.” She can already feel her eyelids grow heavy as she sinks into the mattress, and a soft yawn slips from her lips. “See? I’ll be out in five minutes.”

“It’s not the falling asleep part that I’m worried about.” He lays down next to her, his skin brushing against hers, but though he can feel her warmth next to him, it feels like a dark ocean lies between them. “I wish that dream wouldn’t trouble you so much.”

“What, the one with the cries of my unborn child? Oh yeah, nothing troubling there.” She shifts onto her side, facing away from the Master, and tries not to sink into his touch when he wraps his arm around her waist. “Besides, it doesn’t matter,” she adds, more to herself than to him. “There’s nothing in the Matrix about dying forests or me drowning in a lake. Just hormones, like you said before. It doesn’t mean anything.”

The Master considers whether or not to challenge her, but decides against it. “You have nightmares, too,” she whispers. “You never talk about them either.”

“Well, it’s not like they would come as any surprise.”

“What are they?”

He raises an eyebrow. “Really? _This_ is the pillow talk you want to have tonight?”

The Doctor nods.

The Master’s hearts clench painfully in his chest. “Losing my daughter. Losing you. Just losing in general, I imagine.” He instinctively curls his body around hers, as if he can physically tether her to him against all the odds of a universe that seems determined to tear them apart.

“Do you think they’ll ever stop?” she asks softly.

His free hand glides across her exposed shoulder before covering it with the blanket to keep her warm. “One day, Theta," he promises. "But not today.”

Even with her mental barriers in place, the Master can sense her brain quieting down as sleep threatens to overtake her. “You know,” she mumbles sleepily as her eyelids flutter close, “if we want to rule Gallifrey, we have to tell them. We have to tell them what you did.”

Unsure of how to answer her, the Master wordlessly pulls her to his chest and concentrates on the steady thrum of her hearts, the last echo of a fallen civilization built on a terrible lie. Maybe that’s how all civilizations are, he wonders.

“One day, Theta. But not today.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't know why, but this chapter was really tricky to write; I think I ended up writing three separate versions of it before splicing them together. On top of that, this chapter made my poor Catholic school ass google if pregnant sex is a thing that's safe. Gotta love my high school sex ed. :P
> 
> I'm already halfway through the next chapter, so hopefully expect that up by the end of this week!


	9. Human Skin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gosh, I really need to stop making promises about when I'll update, huh? However, I am happy to say that I finally quit my shitty job that was making me depressed, so hopefully that'll translate into slightly quicker updates. Thank you to everyone who's stuck around this far; this fic has 5-6 chapters left, and I'm excited to reach the end with y'all!

_“Isn’t she incredible, Yaz?”_

_Yaz beams down at the gurgling, red-faced baby wrapped in the Doctor’s arms. “A bit smaller than I expected,” the Doctor continues lightly. “Bit squirmier, too. And she’s so loud sometimes! I’d nearly forgotten how loud babies could be. Their lungs are so tiny, how does that even work?”_

_“I have no idea,” Yaz laughs before turning her attention back to the baby, who fortunately seems perfectly calm and content for the time being. “How are you feeling, Doctor? Shouldn’t you be lying down?”_

_“Oh, I’m fine, Yaz. Not much thanks to this one, though. Felt like she was going to take half my organs with her at one point,” she says warmly, as if she couldn’t wish for a better fate. “But it was all worth it in the end. She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”_

_Yaz gently taps the baby’s nose and watches her wide hazel eyes flutter open in surprise. “She… she’s got your eyes,” Yaz breathes._

_Yaz could drown forever in the sound of the Doctor’s laughter, as warm as it had been when they first met. “Are you saying my eyes are beautiful?”_

_It is at that moment that a distant part of Yaz realizes she’s in a dream, because the waking Yaz would never admit, without a shred of embarrassment or hesitation in her voice, “Yes, Doctor. Of course you’re beautiful.”_

_When the Doctor looks up at her and smiles, she’s so dazzlingly bright that Yaz has to avert her gaze. “So are you, Yaz. From the first moment I saw you. I don’t like to pick favorites, but I’ve always felt a special connection between us. More than Ryan, more than Graham, more than anyone else in all of Creation.”_

_Yaz’s heart soars._

_“Which is why I’m so sorry that this has to be goodbye.”_

_Yaz’s eyes snap back to the Doctor but the light is already gone, replaced by a dark, chillingly familiar expression Yaz has only glimpsed when the Doctor has an enemy backed into a corner and thinks the humans have turned their backs. “No need to act so shocked,” she says with a smile, but it’s all wrong, all stretched and sharp and feral. “You must know what happens next.”_

_Yaz can feel her heart pounding against her ribcage like a caged bird begging for release, while the Doctor continues to grin like a cat playing with its food. “I’m a Time Lord, Yasmin Khan,” she begins, dripping with condescension as she slowly ascends a golden dias. “Once upon a time, I thought I was the last of my kind, but I was wrong. I’m just the first of the Time Lords, destined to rule this universe.”_

_“But you’re not a ruler!” shouts Yaz, tears prickling in her eyes. “When we met, you said you were just a traveler! You said you were nobody!”_

_The Doctor reaches the top and looks down at Yaz without a trace of warmth, while the child in her arms begins to laugh, high-pitched and cruel. “Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong. You don’t know the first thing about me. You should have listened to your little Shobogan friends. You don’t know what I’m capable of.”_

_The Doctor chuckles at Yaz’s shocked expression. “What, you didn’t think I would find out that you were planning to betray me? You’ve seen me read minds before. You saw what I could do to Percy Shelley, and I wasn’t even trying to hurt him.”_

_Yaz shudders at the manic glint in the Doctor’s eyes._

_“God knows what I could do to you.”_

_Faced with this twisted, wrathful version of the Doctor, Yaz does what her Doctor always taught her: she turns and runs, even though she knows it won’t be enough to save her._

_“You wanted me to be the last of my people,” the Doctor’s voice hisses inside her head. “You wanted me to suffer and die all alone. That kind of loneliness, you don’t know what it’s like. Well, maybe now you will.”_

_Yaz blinks, and suddenly finds herself running through the Kasaavin dimension. “No, no, no, no. Not here, please, not here….”_

_She stumbles to the ground and watches numbly as brief flashes of electricity disappear into unending darkness. Her entire body shakes like she’s about to vomit, but nothing comes up. So she curls up into a ball instead, as a voice from the dark recesses of her mind whispers, “There’s no one coming, Yaz. No one to save you now.”_

Maybe this is Jahannam _, Yaz thinks despairingly, as the cold, fleshy tendrils sway above her. She remembers standing over a riverbed of bodies, her hands and clothes stained red, but she can’t for the life of her recall how they got there, so perhaps this is what she deserves. A cold and lonely universe. A universe without the Doctor._

_“Please don’t leave me here,” she whispers. “I need you.”_

_Yaz lays in cold, numb silence for so long that when she finally notices a small, flickering light in the distance, she wonders if it’s just a hallucination. When the light persists, however, Yaz unsteadily gets to her feet and begins to walk toward it, before breaking into a sprint. The light is warm, so very warm, and if she can just reach out her hand, it almost feels like…._

_Like a dying star, the light expands and engulfs the entire Kasaavin dimension, knocking the air out of Yaz’s lungs. When she recovers, she realizes that she’s found her way to the Matrix Chamber, dark and empty save for a small figure in a sky grey coat lying prone on the ground._

_Yaz runs to the Doctor’s crumpled form, only to pull away upon noticing the familiar gash in her forehead from which her blood pools onto the ground._

_She’s still freezing from the Kassavin dimension, but Yaz holds the Doctor’s cold body in her arms anyway, as if she can protect her from something that’s already come to pass. A bubble of hysteria rises up from Yaz’s chest, startling even herself, before quickly subsiding into horrified silence._

_The shadow of a man falls over Yaz, who doesn’t bother raising her eyes to face him. “You did this,” she just barely chokes out._

_The Master laughs just as he did when a blown-out plane sent her plummeting to her death. “No, child._ You _did this.”_

Yaz wakes alone, in the familiar safety of her bedroom. It’s never felt more like a prison cell.

* * *

Beneath the dim ceiling lamp hanging over their dining table, a chipped green mug filled with tea sends a gentle puff of steam rising into the air. Yaz cradles the mug in her hands and waits several minutes before taking a sip, instead letting its warmth seep into her hands. The wafting smell of citrus and lavender reminds her of the air freshners her mum would leave around the apartment, and despite the fact that they were always too strong for Yaz’s taste, just the thought of them now is enough to elicit a sharp pang of homesickness. But it’s better than letting her mind dwell on her nightmare, so she breathes in the fragrances and lets the memories in.

After the runaway incident, as her family came to refer to it, she’d often spend late nights like this talking to Sonya, usually wrapped in a thick wool blanket on their sofa. Sometimes their parents would wake up in the morning and find them passed out on the floor, but they never complained too much. A lot of times it’d be the only way Yaz could get to sleep. She can’t remember if she ever thanked Sonya for staying up with her. She promises to do it the first thing she gets back. Whenever that is.

Once she feels her pulse finally return to normal, she takes a few sips of her tea. Already she feels calmer, more grounded. Her eyes wander around their cluttered apartment kitchen, from Ryan’s dirty dishes to the loaf of bread that Graham forgot to put away, but she doesn’t mind at all. They’re a welcome reminder of the other humans who make this strange adventure a little less lonely. 

She perks up in surprise as a bedroom door creaks open. She can hear the shuffle of slippers across their carpet before Ryan, clad in boxers and an old grey T-shirt, tentatively steps into the archway of the kitchen. “Is it okay if I join you?” he asks softly. 

Yaz nods and watches him pull up a chair next to her. The ticking clock above their sink marks the silence.

“Couldn’t sleep?” she asks after a while.

Ryan shakes his head. “Saw those dregs again. You?”

“Take your pick. I reckon we’ve all got enough nightmare fuel to last us a lifetime.”

Ryan nods and stares down at his folded hands. “Yeah. Guess we really didn’t know what we were signing up for back then, huh?”

Yaz looks at him curiously. “Do you think you would’ve changed your mind if you knew?”

“Probably, yeah,” he admits after a second’s hesitation. “I mean, I don’t completely regret it, you know? Without the Doctor, I’d be stuck at my warehouse job, just living day in day out. Wouldn’t be learning anything new about the world. I probably wouldn’t be so close to my dad or granddad, either. But I’ve also seen things that are gonna stay with me my whole life. I don’t know if I can handle that.”

“I know what you mean,” Yaz murmurs, staring blankly into her mug like she’s about to get sucked in. “I want to say it’s worth it, but I don’t know anymore. She did say we would come back as different people, but I have no idea how we’re even supposed to just come back and pick up our lives like nothing’s happened.”

As if to prove her point, the sudden buzz of Ryan’s cellphone makes Yaz jump more than the now mundane sight of a maintenance drone whizzing past an alien city’s glass spires outside their kitchen window. At this point, something as ordinary as a bright red London bus would probably give her a heart attack. 

“Sorry ‘bout that,” says Ryan, tucking his phone into his pocket. “It’s Aoka. I’ll get back to her later.”

“Oh?” Yaz leans in and gives him a coy smile. “Bit late for a text from a mate, isn’t it?”

Ryan laughs awkwardly. “Nah, it’s nothing like that. She’s just been going through a rough few days.” Yaz’s smile slips as Ryan casts his eyes to the floor. “I feel bad, ‘cause I’m sure she wants to be more than just mates. Pretty sure I would like that, too. But I can’t ask her out if I’m just going to leave in a few weeks.” 

“Yeah, that’d be a hell of a long-distance relationship. But you could always come back to visit her, right?”

“I don’t know, Yaz. I… I feel like this is the end. I mean, I’ve been thinking about leaving for a while now, but even if we all decided to stay longer, it’s not like we can travel with the Doctor how we used to. She’ll have a kid to raise; she can’t just drop everything for a space field trip.”

Yaz’s heart sinks like a stone. “Yeah,” she whispers. “I guess you’re right.”

“It’s weird to think about, I know. It’s always been so fast with her, just running wherever she decides to take us next, that it feels weird to suddenly stop. I know we haven’t talked about it, but this has to be the end, right?” He glances down and starts tugging at a loose thread on his T-shirt. “Do… do you reckon she’ll drop by at least?”

Yaz pictures the Doctor standing on her doorstep with fruitcake and an ugly Christmas sweater, bouncing on her heels like an antsy seven-year-old. It’s an endearing thought, but Yaz worries she might cry if she thinks about it for any longer. “I’m not sure. She must’ve traveled with other people before us, but she never mentions them. Maybe she just drops us off and forgets we even existed. Wouldn’t surprise me too much.”

“Man, Yaz, never thought I’d hear you talk about the Doctor like that. You sure you’re okay?”

Yaz grips her mug so hard that Ryan can see her knuckles pull her skin taut. “Ryan? Does… does the Doctor scare you sometimes?”

“Hey, what’re you going on about?” asks Ryan, his forehead creased in worry. “Did something happen?”

“No, no, it’s just… she’s _killed_ people, Ryan. We’ve watched her do it. She blew up that boy at the Kerblam warehouse. She let the man who could’ve been my granddad get shot. She almost killed Percy Shelley just by touching him.”

“Come on, you know none of that was her fault. She didn’t want any of those people to die.” 

“Do we know that for sure?” According to the clock on the wall, it’s just past three in the morning, surely not the time for this sort of conversation, but Yaz can’t help but let the words tumble out. “She can paralyze someone with a tap on the neck and read people’s minds in an instant; she could definitely hurt someone if she wanted to.”

“Yeah? So could we, Yaz. There’s nothing stopping us from punching each other’s lights out, except we don’t want to, so we don’t. Just ‘cause she can hurt other people doesn’t mean she actually does.”

Yaz nods, but Ryan knows she’s unconvinced. “When did this happen?” he asks softly. “When did we start doubting one of our best friends?”

“Maybe when we finally started asking questions.”

Ryan doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he gets up and starts fixing himself a cup of tea. Water sloshes from the kettle, tea leaves crunch in his fist, and through it all the clock ticks down Earth second by Earth second, as if in defiance of the fact that Earth has never felt so out of reach.

“She really is an alien, isn’t she,” Ryan muses, bracing himself on the ledge of their wooden countertop. “You forget sometimes, because she looks totally human on the outside. But then she starts going on about having two hearts and an ectospleen and twenty-seven brains, and you remember how different she is on the inside.” He lets out a heavy sigh and hangs his head, as if his neck can no longer support the hundreds of thoughts weighing on his mind. “I almost wish we hadn’t asked her about who she really was, so we could go on pretending she was just like us. Human organs under human skin.”

Yaz nods vigorously. She misses those days so much, before the Master, before the Time Lords, before Gallifrey. Meeting Rosa Parks, fighting aliens with King James, watching cosmic fireworks from the safety of the TARDIS. Listening to the Doctor ramble on about alien nurse cats, running into the TARDIS kitchen with a fire extinguisher when she tried making scrambled eggs for the fam, doubling over in laughter the first time she found Yaz’s makeup bag and started coating her mouth with eyeshadow. She felt so down to Earth in those moments, so genuine, so human, and yet Yaz also knows that the version of Doctor from her nightmare, the wrathful deity with an unspeakable darkness in her eyes, exists in her as well. Yaz has only caught glimpses of that face; meanwhile, the Shobogans have seen it every day of their lives for thousands of years. As much as she doesn’t want to see that face again, like a child picking at an angry red scab, she can’t help but claw deeper into the wound.

It takes a moment for Yaz’s brain to register the scrapping of chair legs as Ryan sits beside her again. “I don’t want things to end like this,” he tells her. “If this is the end of our time with her, we need to make things right. I talked to Graham about it, and he says we all need to have a proper sit down with her, let everyone speak their minds, you know? She’s going on maternity leave from the Academy starting tomorrow, so I figured we could talk to her then.”

Yaz swallows nervously. If she slipped up and gave the Doctor enough suspicion to look inside her head….

“I don’t know if I’m ready to talk to her about everything yet,” she lies smoothly. “Those things you said about me and the Doctor, well, they’re not exactly wrong. I still have a lot of things to sort out before I confront her, you know? But you two should still talk to her tomorrow. And I’ll talk to her soon, I promise.”

Ryan stares at her intently, and Yaz wonders if he can see through her lie, but he eventually shrugs and lets it go. “Alright, if that’s what you want, Yaz,” he concedes. “If you change your mind, I’m gonna meet Graham after his shift ends at four.”

 _I could search her room for the dial then_ , Yaz thinks. And who knows? Maybe it was destroyed along with the rest of the Capitol, or maybe it has some kind of Time Lords-only lock on it, or maybe it doesn’t contain any information about the Looms at all. It was a long-shot plan, after all. It wouldn’t hurt to look, and if the dial wasn’t there, then they’d just have to change their strategy. Learn to live harmoniously with this new batch of Time Lords. Hope things would turn out better this time around, somehow.

“Sounds good, Ryan.” Yaz stands up and rinses out her mug. “I think I’m gonna head back to sleep, if you’re good with that.”

She can tell that Ryan wants to say more, to ask how she’s really doing, and maybe there was a point where that kind of transparent openness was easier. She’d spent so many nights spilling her guts to Sonya like it was nothing. Simpler nights, better nights. Talking to Ryan should be easier than it is.

But then again, when it comes to bottling up emotions, Yaz had spent a lot of time learning from the best.


	10. God Complex

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Turkey Day, everybody! After 5 months, 4 rewrites of this pesky scene, 3 months of weird covid college, 2 wisdom teeth surgeries, and 1 bottle of painkillers, I'm finally updating this fic! Gosh, I hope it makes sense, but at this point I've stared at my google doc page for long enough (how on Earth did this end up being 5k words?), so here ya goooooooooo

Bus drivers have great people skills, Graham reminds himself as he and Ryan scan the crowd of Shobogans milling about the sunny central plaza, hoping for a glimpse of familiar bottle-blonde hair. When you see hundreds of regulars a day, their stories can’t help but unfold before your eyes, even if they hardly spare you a glance. You learn the signs, the unmistakable tells of a job interview that went south or a shouting match that resulted in no other way home than the faithful 85 to Sheffield city centre. Whether a lighthearted quip or a comforting silence was in order, you could read it all in the precise slump of the shoulders, in the shape of the eyes staring out a dark, rainy window. His own kind of telepathy, Graham thinks proudly. The Doc may have her strange Time Lord tricks, but it was no replacement for some good old fashioned empathy and common sense, courtesy of Gallifrey’s new resident humans. 

Maybe that’s why she bothered with their planet in the first place, Graham wonders. She may be an impossibly old alien with knowledge of things well beyond the understanding of a humble Earthling bus driver, but that’s a good thing sometimes, he likes to think. Helps keep her head on shoulders. A stabilizing influence. _Just have to tell it to her like it is, that’s all,_ he tells himself. 

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

Graham pulls himself out of his thoughts and turns around. “You see her, son?”

“Sort of, yeah,” Ryan scoffs.

Graham follows Ryan's line of sight, and that’s when he notices a team of Shobogans pulling a white marble statue upright on a plinth, the newest in a series of towering statues that line the perimeter of the plaza. Gallifrey’s past presidents, Graham remembers the Doctor explaining once. Most of them had been left in various states of ruin, from minor scuff marks to obliterated limbs, making the gleaming newness of this Time Lord statue all the more striking. While most of its predecessors look down on the crowd with haughtiness or indifference, this new statue has its eyes closed in serenity, its face framed by cropped hair and slender shoulders….

_Oh, dear._

Watching the Shobogan builders’ progress from the sidelines are two familiar Time Lords. As the humans approach from behind, they turn their heads in perfect unison, as if able to sense their presence - a thought which doesn’t do much to ease Graham’s nerves. 

“Hiya, fam!” says the Doctor brightly, oblivious to the Master’s scowling. “No Yaz today?”

“She’s busy on a patrol, I think,” Ryan lies smoothly, although Graham is too preoccupied at the moment to find that somewhat troubling. "Why did you need her for something?"

The Doctor’s smile falters. “Oh. I see. Just… haven’t seen her around lately. Wondered if she might be cross with me, is all. But of course she’s just busy!” she exclaims before either Graham or Ryan have a chance to correct her. “That’s our Yaz, already shaping up to be the best police officer Gallifrey’s ever seen.”

The Master just rolls his eyes and wraps a hand around her waist. “Of course, dearest,” he patronizes sweetly. Graham’s stomach turns. “Now, what do you want with her?” he demands, possessively pulling the Doctor closer to his side. “As you can see, we’re rather busy at the moment.”

“Not as busy as them, I’d wager,” Graham observes coldly, as he watches the Shobogans strain and groan under the statue’s weight. “What’s all this for?”

“It’s tradition to build statues of the newest Lord or Lady President,” the Doctor explains. “Doesn't come around very often like Earth elections; we usually hang around until we're dead or exiled. Look, you can even see one of my old faces over there in the corner - much more handsome without the crater in his eye socket, I promise. And there’s Romana! Brilliant presidency, except for the Monans, of course. And the Dogma Virus zombies, and the civil war, and--”

“That all sounds real interesting,” Ryan cuts in, “but can… can we talk for a second? About… you know….” He clears his throat and glances pointedly at the Master.

For someone who can read minds, she’s not the best at knowing what people are thinking, Graham notices as he patiently waits for the lightbulb to go off in the Doctor’s head. 

“Oh!” she exclaims. “Sure, sure thing. Just one sec.” She then turns to the Master, opens her mouth, and starts to sing, for lack of a better word, if singing could also sound like the lulling tides of the ocean, the whisper of sweet nothings on a summer afternoon, and the lingering silence of a parting wave all at once. 

_Why can’t the TARDIS translate High Gallifreyan?_ Graham had once asked her.

_Why translate something when your mind doesn’t need the words?_

While Graham supposed that was true, it didn’t change the way it made him feel so small, so _speck-like_. It felt like when you first learn that some animals can see a thousand more colors than humans, and you can’t quite wrap your head around it. You go around all day trying to imagine a deeper purple, or a brighter yellow, or a softer grey, but it all feels so out of reach. He couldn’t blame the Doctor for speaking in her native tongue around the Master, but it was happening more and more of late, and he just wished she would realize how that felt. To hear the language of the universe and grasp, like an infant, at just two or three notes. 

The Master murmurs something back - ripples on the water, twin hearts beating too fast, footsteps running to the arms of a lover - but after a brief negotiation, he lets her go and turns his attention back to the builders, who have apparently erected the statue four-tenths of an inch off-center, in the Master’s view. 

Graham clenches his jaw, but stays quiet. _Stay calm. Let her know how you feel, but don’t push her away. Simple, right?_

“Alright fam, what’s up?” asks the Doctor as she leads them in the opposite direction, toward a silver fountain in the center of the plaza. 

Graham and Ryan take her arms and help her settle onto the fountain’s ledge; much to Graham’s worry, he can feel the sharpness of her bones beneath red silk and papery skin. She’s been getting paler over the past few days, too, he now realizes. “Are you feeling alright, lamb?” he asks. “You look a bit… er, peaky.”

“Oh, probably just the heat,” she assures him. She dips her hand into the fountain water and presses it to her neck; her eyelids flutter in relief.

Graham and Ryan share looks; they’re both wearing long sleeves, as is everyone else on this crisp autumn day. But now isn’t the time to fret over Time Lord biology, they decide. 

“So, about the Master,” Ryan begins. “We… we think you need to tell the Shobogans what he did.”

“What do you mean, of course I am,” she says defensively. “Just… after the child’s born, that’s all. I thought we already agreed to that.”

Graham sighs. “Come on, Doc, we know you’re just stalling for time. But this problem’s not going to go away, you understand? Those people,” he says, gesturing to the Shobogans milling about the plaza beneath the Citadel’s sparkling crystal spires, “they deserve to know the truth about what happened to the people they loved.”

“You don’t need to tell me that,” she murmurs. “The Master killed the people I love, too. But don’t you see? They’re going to want him dead when they find out what he’s done, and I can’t let that happen.” 

“And we’re not gonna let that happen, you hear me? I’ve seen how much you two mean to each other, how much it means for you to have him in your life again.” _Even though you_ really _could’ve sprung for someone better._ “It’s why we gave you time in the beginning, but now we have to think about where we go from here.”

“Why now? Waiting isn’t going to hurt anyone, Graham.”

“Don’t you see, lamb?” he implores, taking her hand. “It’s already hurting people. It’s hurting _us_. Look, when we agreed to keep your secret, we did it because we care about you. But then you invited us to live here, with the Shobogans, and now we’re starting to care about them, too. Do you have any idea how hard it is for us to watch these people make friends with us, start trusting us, while we’re hiding something this big from them? We’re trying to keep things together as best we can, but we can’t keep living a lie like this. It’s already tearing poor Yaz apart.”

At the mention of Yaz’s name, the Doctor’s eyes go wide. “It is? Are you sure?”

Graham nods. “She’s angry with you, love, and she’s hurting. She looks up to you, always has, but she can’t understand why you’re deceiving your own people.”

“Really? I... had no idea that’s how she felt,” she admits in a subdued voice.

“Nothing new there,” says Ryan with an exaggerated eye roll. “Look, we’re on your side with this. We don’t want the Master dead. We want to give him a second chance. Maybe the Shobogans will, too. But you’re never going to find out unless you tell them the truth. And we’re not leaving you until we sort this out.”

“There’s nothing to sort out,” the Doctor insists, crossing her arms stubbornly. “They’ll just want to add one more body to the list of dead Gallifreyans, and I’ll never let them. I’ve saved the Master from an execution before, and I’ll do it again if I have to.”

“So that’s it then?” asks Graham, his voice starting to rise in spite of himself. “You’re just going to lie to all these people forever?”

“Not forever! Just… just until they see the Master like I do. Yes, he destroyed Gallifrey, but he’s also helping to rebuild it back the way it was. I’ve spent decades trying to redeem him, and now it’s finally happening. I can’t just throw this opportunity away.”

Graham places a hand to his temple. “So you’re just going to let him walk free,” he says, trying not to sound too exasperated, “with no consequences for murdering billions of people.”

“Well, it’s not like there’s any prison in the universe that could hold him! I once kept him in a vault for nearly a century, but only because he agreed to it. Please, Graham,” she pleads, her slender fingers curling around his wrist, “you have to believe me, punishing him would only make things worse. The universe is safest with the Master at my side.”

“And it’s a total coincidence that it makes you the happiest, too,” Ryan points out, unimpressed. 

“Don’t you see the problem here, love?’” implores Graham. “Back on Earth, we’d get an impartial judge to sort out this whole mess, and you’re just about the furthest thing from that.”

The Doctor snorts. “Well, good luck finding anyone like that for a case involving planetary genocide.”

“Yeah, well, I definitely wouldn’t choose the expectant wife of the convict,” Graham fires back. 

“Time Lords can only be tried by other Time Lords. I’m the only other Time Lord left, and I’ve already forgiven the Master for everything he’s done,” she says simply. “So there’s nothing else to do except wait for a time when the truth won’t get anyone else hurt.”

Graham sighs. Despite the Doctor’s fathomless age, he had always regarded her, with her reckless hyperactivity and insatiable sweet tooth, more like a granddaughter than anything else. But now, any grandfatherly warmth drains away from his face. “And you’re the only one who gets to decide that, cockle, is that right?”

“Yes, I am.” The Doctor stands in the shadows of the imposing Time Lord statues all around them and squares back her shoulders, somehow managing to tower over the humans despite her shorter stature. “I’m a Time Lord, Graham,” she reminds him icily. “It comes with the territory.”

“Yes, yes, the summit of the mountain, we’ve heard that before,” Graham replies, refusing to back down. “There’s a lot we’ve learned to put up with during our time with you, Doc. Lying to us, putting other people in danger, breaking your own rules. But we didn’t become friends with a tyrant, Doctor. Or a hypocrite. Because if you hide the truth from the Shobogans just like the Time Lords hid the Timeless Child from you, then you’re just the same as them.”

 _Finally, a chink in the armor_ , Graham thinks as the Doctor visibly falters. “I… that’s not….”

Graham folds his arms. “What, Doctor? Afraid they’ll stop building you statues when they find out your secret?”

“Is that really what you lot think of me?” she demands, stepping away from them in revulsion. “I never _asked_ for them to do this. They wanted it for themselves! Oh, go on, look around, would you?”

Graham obeys, and notices for the first time how Shobogans are flocking one by one to the statue of the Doctor. Some touch the base of the plinth, others kneel from a distance, yet even though Graham’s hearing isn’t the keenest, he can still hear them all murmuring to themselves, like the rustling of leaves just before the wind tears them apart.

 _No, not just murmuring,_ he realizes. “They’re _praying_ to you.”

The Doctor meets his disgusted expression with cold defiance. “They prayed to all of us,” she tells him and Ryan. “Sitting on high in the Citadel, in our shining little bubble, we were the closest things to gods Gallifrey has. But no one ever answered their prayers.” She purses her lips, and Graham can see the resolve forming in her eyes. “Or at least, no one yet.”

Moments later, Ryan and Graham find themselves trailing behind the Doctor as she strides up to the nearest Shobogan, a young woman with long brown hair and a small bundle clutched to her chest. “Please,” she whispers fervently, eyes closed and voice trembling as she stands directly in the Doctor’s shadow. “My baby, she’s so sick, and I don’t know what to do. Please, please, I lost my husband on Oblivion Day; I can’t lose her, too.”

The Doctor rests her hand on the woman’s shoulder. “You won’t have to.”

A hush quickly falls over the plaza as heads turn toward the Doctor. “May I?” she asks, reaching out her arms. 

Confused but hopeful, the woman hands over her child, its tiny wrinkled face just barely poking out of the blankets. “Hello, little one,” murmurs the Doctor, who holds the child with the practiced ease of an experienced parent that ignites a brief flare of pity in Graham’s heart. “What’s your name?” She pauses, listening to the baby’s quiet gurgling. “Essere? Oh, that’s brilliant,” she says to the mother, still gazing at the Doctor like a blind woman seeing the sun for the first time. “Perhaps our children will become friends someday.”

The woman’s hands fly to her mouth. “Oh my,” she whispers. “Oh yes, please, that would be wonderful _._ ”

When the baby coughs and stirs fitfully in the Doctor’s arms, she gets a look in her eyes like she’s about to confess the truth, Graham hopes. But when she opens her mouth, a golden light appears instead of words. The humans and Shobogans alike watch in awe as she wraps threads of golden sunlight around her index finger before pressing it to the child’s lips, who immediately opens its bright hazel eyes and coos in delight. 

Tears burst from the mother’s eyes. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, my lady,” she cries as the Doctor returns her child, now rosy-cheeked and smiling. Clutching the baby to her chest, she bows her head and falls to her knees before the Time Lord. 

She isn’t the only one. One by one, the Shobogans milling about the plaza stop and kneel in awe of the miracle they’ve just witnessed, until the Doctor, Graham, and Ryan are overlooking a sea of bowed heads and genuflecting bodies. 

Graham’s conscience claws at his insides. He wishes he could shout the truth right here, right now, to tell them how he broke down shaking the first time they had walked through the bombed-out Citadel with all its smoldering bodies and couldn’t leave the TARDIS for the rest of the day. His heart races, his head spins, and he feels the ground ripple under his feet, as if any minute those billions of corpses would split open the earth and swallow him whole. 

He glances at Ryan, looking equally disturbed, but then watches in dismay as the Doctor looks over the crowd from her literal pedestal and smiles, basking in the love and devotion of a people deceived. There’s joy in her eyes but also hunger, a kind of desperate longing that shakes Graham to his core. He wonders how long she must have dreamt of this, the love and acceptance from her own people, and what lengths she’d go to in order to never lose them again. 

“You shouldn’t have done that, Doctor,” says the Master, his silent entrance enough to make Graham nearly jump out of his skin. 

“Oh?” she asks, still gazing at the Shobogans. “And why’s that?”

The Master grabs her by the wrist, visibly trembling. “That is your _lifeforce_ , Theta. You need to save it for yourself, for our child.” 

“But it never runs out,” she answers simply. “I can feel it burning inside me, like a flame that never grows cold. Why keep it inside when I can share it with others? That,” she tells Graham with an ice-cold edge, “is what makes me different from other Time Lords. I can give these people a _future_. That’s all that matters now,” she whispers as an afterthought.

 _A future where the Master might just kill you_ , Graham thinks. “But not the past,” he says aloud, indifferent as to whether the Master hears. “You may have saved that baby, but her father’s never coming back because of what your husband did. I understand that kind of loss. I thought that I chose to travel the universe with someone who understood that too, but maybe I was wrong.” Then he turns his back on the Doctor and storms away from the crowd of Shobogans. 

“Let him go,” says the Master, but the Doctor jerks away and runs after him, Ryan following close behind.

“Graham, wait!” she shouts as she weaves around the monuments of her predecessors. “Oh, come on, it’s not me you’re really cross with! Can’t we just--?”

“No, Doctor!” he yells, whipping around to face her. “As a matter of fact, it _is_ you I’m cross with! You don’t get to… to just… act like it’s _fine_ to leave things as they are! He’s your husband, and loving him means taking responsibility for what he’s done. You don’t get to miracle your way out of that with this bloody Messiah act of yours.”

“That’s not what I’m doing!” she says, and Graham doesn’t think he’s ever heard the Doctor so desperate, so vulnerable. “I never wanted to be the Timeless Child, never asked people to treat me like I’m special. But don’t you see that I’m trying to use this power to set things right? Why can’t that be enough?”

“‘Cause you’re still manipulating those people,” says Ryan, who comes to stand next to Graham. “You say you’re helping them, but you’re just lying to them so you can protect him. And there’s nothing anyone can do to stop you.”

“I--”

“Tell him he’s wrong, Doc, I dare you,” Graham interrupts, glaring up at the shiny Citadel spires that glint in the sunlight like the teeth of some planetary monster. “You’ve never liked rules, but tell me you have at least _one_ guiding principle to reign in all that power you have.”

No sooner do the words leave his mouth than Graham nearly trips over himself as he realizes what that principle is.

It’s _them._

They were more than three starry-eyed specks on a cosmic field trip. They were chosen for a reason: to counteract the whims of a woman who could cure the sick one day and cover up genocide the next.

Well, to hell with that.

“Graham, don’t do this!” she pleads as he marches away once more. He can hear her struggling for breath as she tries to keep up, but he forces himself to ignore it. It’s not fair, he thinks, how much her pregnancy feels like a cheap way to garner sympathy, to hide her true power. “For Creator’s sake, I thought… out of everyone, I thought _you’d_ be the one who’d understand!” 

Silence.

A gust of dry wind sends the Doctor’s hair into a frenzy, and her robes billow around her ankles and wrists like crimson sails. It feels to Graham as though an invisible chasm separates them, leaving her shouting with all her strength just for the words to make it across. “Yaz and Ryan are still young; they don’t know what it’s like to watch people come into your life and disappear in an instant. How _lonely_ it becomes, day after day, decade after decade. And… and I don’t know if that will ever stop for someone like me. Immortality, it scares me more than dying ever could.”

Graham turns around, and the devastation in her eyes is so utterly inhuman that it terrifies him to his core. For months, they had hoped to see a more vulnerable side to her, a chance for them to truly know her without her endless barriers and deflections. But now, as he stands in front of this being, carrying the shape of a young human woman but containing so much more, and watches her struggle in vain to be understood, he wonders if they were better off with how things used to be.

“When I found out I was pregnant, it scared me so much, for so many reasons. I couldn’t imagine passing on this curse to my child. But it also made me realize something. We might technically be different species, but the Master is the only person I can have children with. It reminded me that Gallifrey is still my home, that I’m still a Time Lord. Please, neither of us want to hurt anyone; we just want to raise our children. Just… to stop being the last of our kind.”

“Like Eve in the Garden,” Graham remarks, unimpressed. “Except if Sunday church taught me anything, Adam never burned the Garden to the ground. Honestly, Doc, it’s terrifying to see how obsessed you two are, can’t you see that?”

The Doctor nods.

“And none of it matters to you?”

“I love him,” she declares. “Never been more sure of anything else.”

The truth, then. He’s grateful for that, at least. “Then I don’t know what else you want from me. From any of us.”

“Please, Graham, you can’t tell anyone,” she says breathlessly. “I need him, I need him the same way you needed Grace--”

“Don’t you _dare_ bring her into this, lamb,” he snarls, refusing to look at her. “She was a thousand times better than either of you; she would have stood up for what was right. A part of me is grateful she’s not alive to see you now.”

“No, please--”

“I think this conversation’s gone as far as it can,” says Graham, fighting to preserve what little calm he has left. “Come on, son, we’re heading back.”

“No, wait… I….”

 _Just leave her_ , Graham thinks. _She’s made her position clear._

“Graham… Ryan… I can’t….”

“Doctor!”

Graham looks back just in time to see the Master run to the Doctor and catch her just before her legs give out. In an instant, the boiling anger drains away as his new nursing instincts take over. Ryan and Graham rush to her side as the Master cradles her unconscious body in his lap. She’s still breathing, he can see, but it’s frightfully shallow. Graham takes her limp wrist and searches for that familiar double-heartbeat.

What he doesn’t expect is the feeling of ice-cold water filling his lungs the moment he touches her skin.

The sensation is there and gone in the space of a breath, so fast that he could have convinced himself that it was a figment of his imagination, if not for the quiet, trembling child’s voice whispering in the back of his mind like a memory half-remembered:

_Help me. Help my mummy._

For a moment, Graham wonders if he’s going crazy, but then he remembers that crazy, impossible events are just a regular Wednesday with the Doctor. _What do you mean?_ he thinks, unsure of the nuances of telepathy but just trying his best to think his thoughts _loud._

_Mummy needs help. Cold, too cold…_

Graham jerks his hand away as the Doctor’s skin starts to burn with golden regeneration energy. Ryan stumbles backward too, but the Master stoically clings to her, even as Graham can see the beginnings of angry red burns on his skin. 

When the light at last fades away, leaving the Doctor merely asleep, Graham breathes a sigh of relief. “Just another regeneration drain.”

Clearly, the Master doesn’t share the same sentiment. “You stupid, blithering humans! What were you thinking, running off like stray animals? Knowing she would run after you, knowing she’s in no condition to exert herself, knowing she could get hurt!”

The genuine fear in his voice elicits something close to sympathy in Graham, and in that moment, he can’t fathom any point in the past or future where the Master would harm the Doctor. Not when the same hands that murdered thousands now glide over the Doctor as if she’s made of china, checking everything from her forehead to her neck to the curve of her stomach…

 _The baby,_ Graham remembers. He wonders if he should tell the Master, when Ryan suddenly cuts in.

“Oi, don’t go off at us! She’s fine, isn't she? This happens to her ‘bout twice a week now, so don’t go acting like it’s our fault!”

“I never expect competence from the Doctor’s pets,” says the Master, ignoring Ryan’s protests, “but at the very least I expect you lot to avoid making things worse! She’s already exhausted enough without worrying about you and your _insignificant_ arguments!”

All the shouting seems to rouse the Doctor, and it amazes Graham how quickly the all-consuming fury disappears from the Master’s eyes. “Are you alright, Doctor?” he asks, suddenly nothing but tenderness and soft caresses.

“Master…” she whispers, still half-asleep. “So dizzy….” She reaches out, and unlike Graham and Ryan, the Master is there to pick her up and clutch her protectively to his chest. 

“It’s alright, Theta, I’ve got you,” he tells the Doctor, who eagerly wraps her arms around his neck. “Rest now; I’ll take you back.” And without a parting word to the two humans, he carries her away. A hush falls over the lingering crowd of Shobogans, who flock around the Time Lords as they approach with offers of food and water. Meanwhile, a few turn to Graham and Ryan and shoot them dirty looks from across the plaza. 

“Well, that could’ve gone better,” Ryan grumbles. “So what do we do now, granddad? Hey, granddad?” 

Ryan’s hand on his shoulder is enough to pull Graham out of his thoughts. “Ah, sorry, son. It’s just… before she fainted, I could _hear_ her baby. Inside my head, I mean.”

“Really? What did it say?”

“She, I think. She… she said that she and the Doc needed help.”

Ryan furrows his brow. “What, like medical help?”

“Maybe….” Graham watches the red outline of the two Time Lords blend into the orange sunset. “But I think what she needs might be out of our league. We’ve got to figure something out before this whole thing gets out of control.”

“Sure, but how? There’s no way we’re getting through to the Doctor now, not after today. And it’s not like we’ve got any power to tell her what to do. You heard her, it’s only Time Lords who can put other Time Lords on trial, and they’re the only two left.”

Graham hums in thought as he sits and watches the fading sunlight stretch the shadows of past Time Lord presidents into razor-thin lines. Suddenly, an idea sends him scrambling to his feet. “What if they’re not the only two left? You heard what the Doc said; this lot with the collar hats are either dead _or_ they’re in exile. If some of them are still alive somewhere in the universe, they could come back and straighten this out.”

Ryan nods hesitantly. “Yeah, I suppose so. Or at least, it’s worth a shot, isn’t it?”

Graham’s rudimentary knowledge of written Gallifreyan is sketchy at best, but a quick scan of the crumbling statues reveals that only two Time Lords lack a death date engraved beneath their names: the Doctor, and a weathered old man with an ornate staff and granite eyes that somehow look older than anything Graham’s ever seen.

“So we’re gonna search the entire universe for this bloke and try to get him to come back?” asks Ryan as Graham inspects the Gallifreyan writing. “Where do we even start with that?”

“How about we start with a name?” Graham suggests. After sounding out the syllables for a moment, he takes a step back, tilts his head, and stares into the eyes of this strange, fathomless being, in the hopes of getting any kind of reading on this man at all. He used to think he was so good at reading the faces of other people, but after today with the Doctor… perhaps a Sheffield bus driver just didn’t cut it.

“Alright, Rassilon,” says Graham, “looks like you've got a new prayer to answer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah yes, who could forget everyone's favorite Time Lord asshole? Surely only good things can come of this idea....
> 
> Because this scene ended up being insanely long, I split up my original chapter into two parts. So expect another update sometime this weekend!
> 
> And finally, to all of you who have stuck with this fic, thank you so much! Even if it's just a quick kudos, your support means a lot!


	11. Intertwined

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for suicidal thoughts

Yaz knew why Reneth had never been able to find the dial.

Just one look around the suite, adorned with golden furnishings and glittering crystal inlays from floor to ceiling, and she could tell that the Doctor wouldn’t keep anything of sentimental value here. So instead, after a furtive glance over her shoulder to make sure the coast was clear, she pushes open the doors to the TARDIS and basks in the familiar orange light of the console room. She looks up at the crystal pillars, hoping for some kind of clue to help her navigate the labyrinth of rooms and corridors, but the TARDIS is stonily silent.

Yaz lets out a quiet huff. Of course the TARDIS wouldn’t help anyone looking to steal from its owner. So she decides to start her search the old fashioned way, by inspecting the console inch by inch, feeling around for a secret panel, a hidden switch, anywhere that the Doctor would store something valuable. Yaz would try checking somewhere else, like the Doctor’s bedroom, except she didn’t think that the Doctor actually had one on board. The few times they had found her sleeping, she would be curled up at the base of the console, usually with a wrench in one hand and a custard cream in the other. It was like having a five-year-old child suddenly crash after hours of bouncing off the walls.

Except unlike a small child, Yaz never saw the Doctor smile while she was asleep.

Graham and Ryan had mentioned she was having nightmares, and that they were getting worse. Yaz supposed that it couldn’t be too much of a surprise; after all, if a few months of travelling with the Doctor had accrued a lifetime’s supply of nightmare fuel, she could scarcely imagine what actually being the Doctor would do to her psyche. Perhaps the Doctor was used to the nightmares by this point. The thought made Yaz shudder.

After about forty minutes of poking and prodding, Yaz sinks down at the base of the stairs. There had to be a more logical way to go about this. The suns dial was a kind of living marriage document, a testament to the bond she shared with the Master. It wasn’t something she would display proudly to the world, but it wasn’t the sort of thing she would bury under a pile of rubbish, either. So if the Doctor needed a private place to think about the Master without being conspicuous, where would she go?

And with that, Yaz takes off down the hallway, boots slapping against metal grating. After a few starts where she stumbles into a series of dusty broom closets (she swears the TARDIS is reshuffling the layout again), she finally locates the door that leads into the main library. 

Yaz hasn’t spent much time in here at all, if she’s being honest. Between the towering bookshelves that seem like they’re going to topple over any second and the fact that the vast majority of the Doctor’s collection is written in Gallifreyan, there’s never been much of a reason to. But this time, it’s not the books in the library that interest Yaz; it’s the holographic planetarium in the center of it. 

At first, she had assumed that the planetary model was just for decoration, but now, after several months of scanning star charts for any unusual frequencies during her slower patrol days, she clearly recognizes the large red orb to the far right of the model, hovering between two white stars, as Gallifrey. 

Of course, as a holographic projection, it looks insubstantial, but the Doctor taught her to never take appearances for granted. So she sticks her hand through the red sphere, creating a static-charged glitch around her wrist, and sure enough, she grabs onto a solid metal surface buried at the planet’s core. She pulls it out, and the delicate golden swirls around the smooth copper disk tells her everything she needs to know.

Yaz’s heart pounds in her ears. She’s found it, but that doesn’t mean they’ll actually be able to use it, she reminds herself. She flips the dial over a few times, but there doesn’t seem to be any sort of panel or activation button to open it. Presumably the Gallifreyan writing along the edges contain some sort of instructions, but if so, it’s far beyond Yaz’s understanding. Part of her is tempted to put it back, to pretend she never found it and return to the Shobogans empty-handed. It’s a cowardly thought, she knows, but just thinking of how livid the Doctor and the Master would be if—

Yaz starts and nearly drops the suns dial as the soft ticking of metal gears whirrs to life and the center of the disk retracts, exposing a circle of white light.

Psychic activation, Yaz thinks, wanting to smack herself in the forehead. Of course.

She taps on the circle and watches as a holographic projection coalesces before her. Two young men, one sun-kissed and curly-haired, the other lanky and pale, stand together in golden robes and pompous Time Lord hats. A golden ribbon entwines their hands together, and they gaze into each other’s eyes the way that one might if a cold, dark sky one day erupted into a blinding shower of glittering stars. 

He’s so happy, Yaz marvels as she stares at what can only be a younger Doctor, still recognizable by that confident, boyish grin with the power to chase away a thousand doubts and fears. I’ve never seen her happy like this before. Chipper, yes. Excited, yes. Twirling in the middle of the streets in Sheffield after one too many ginger beers? More times than she can recollect. But never happy, full stop, no qualifiers. Despite all that running from place to place, Yaz had never once seen what she looked like when there was truly no place she would rather be.

Curious, Yaz reaches out to touch the Doctor’s face, wondering if it’ll give her some kind of psychic link to this frozen moment in time. 

When she does, it knocks the air from her lungs.

Even though a distant part of her brain tells her she’s standing still, it feels like she’s been thrown backwards, like someone getting hit by a high-speed train. She closes her eyes and although she can’t feel the slightest breeze on her skin, she hears the rush of wind in her ears, deafening by all account, yet somehow not enough to drown out the faint sound of overlapping voices:

_“...tell Borusa he’s a trunkike if he thinks he can tell us off for ditching Otherstide. Not like I could snog you in front of the Council without them withering into dust…”_

_“...doesn’t matter what she said about my family, Koschei. I’m with you, okay? I’m with you no matter what…”_

_“...always like this, but it doesn’t have to be, you know? We… we could take off, just the two of us…”_

_“...course I’m not mad. Do you think something as small as a political marriage could get in our way? I say we stick cobblemice in her hair and watch her run around Arcadia like...”_

_“...a daughter, huh? That’s great news, Kosch. No, really, it is. Yeah. I… I’ve got to, um… I’ll see you around, okay?”_

_“...if you would just listen to me, for Rassilon’s sake! You can’t just go Looming her back to life without….”_

Yaz’s eyes snap open, only to find herself sprinting down a familiar set of corridors within the Citadel. Unaided by any conscious thought, her legs somehow navigate each twist and turn, until she arrives at a set of heavy bronze doors in what looks to be the Citadel’s deepest layer, judging by the pale, watery sunlight coming through the slitted windows. The dim lighting makes it hard to see the Gallifreyan writing covering the doors, but when she pushes them open, she discovers that there’s no need for light down here. 

Yaz had suspected that Looms wouldn’t resemble the kinds of looms she had seen in museums on Earth. But she hadn’t anticipated tanks of human-like figures floating in bright golden liquid like something straight out of a sci-fi movie. The tanks were the only source of light in the room, leaving large swatches of darkness between them. It hurt Yaz’s eyes to look at the Looms straight on, even without the nauseating sight of tiny bodies, the bodies of children, floating in a peaceful, death-like sleep.

Their gently sleeping faces stand in stark contrast with the pained, grief-stricken expression of the only living person in the Looming Chamber. His thick black robes make his skin look bone-white, or perhaps he was sicklier than the version she had seen on his wedding day. When Yaz—the Doctor, she realizes now—bursts through the door, he turns his head away and snaps, “Leave me alone, Theta.”

Yaz—Theta—the Doctor all take a step forward. The same black robes swirl around their feet. “You can’t do this, Koschei. You know the rules.”

Koschei scoffs and jerks his head to keep his dark bangs from falling into his eyes. “Since when have you or I ever listened to the rules?”

“These rules are different,” Theta whispers sadly. “You can’t bring her back. That’s not how the Looms work. Even if you could get the genetics right, she wouldn’t be the same.”

“She’d be the same enough,” Koschei retorts, staring into the empty Loom before him like a drowning man. “And with a bit of clever time hopping, I could—”

“No. Even if you could, the universe would never allow it.”

“Well, I don’t give a damn if the universe approves!” Koschei’s hands curl into fists at his sides. “First regeneration, Theta. She was so young; she shouldn’t have died. Do you think that your precious universe was right to allow that?”

Theta shakes his head. “Of course not. But we can’t change it.”

“Then what’s the point of being a damn Time Lord anyway?”

Theta walks over to Koschei and takes his hand, ignoring the psychic flare of anger that shoots through his skin like half a dozen pins. “I don’t know,” he admits. “But your daughter wouldn’t want you to destroy yourself like this.”

“She was all I had,” Koschei whispers. “You know I don’t care for that Brightshore harpy, but I was willing to stay for her. Now she’s gone, and there’s nothing left for me here.”

Theta tries to pull Koschei closer, but stops when he feels something hard and metal brush against his thigh. Before Koschei has time to react, he reaches into the pocket of his robe and fishes out a small cylindrical piece of crystal with steel plating wrapped around it in a spiral that leads to a smooth, copper trigger.

Koschei freezes. “Give that back, Theta.”

“An unraveller?” Theta shouts. “Are you out of your mind? What in Arcadia’s name were you planning to do with this?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he says, eyes narrowed into daggers. “Perhaps I was going to unravel the timeline of a dwarf star and watch the pretty anti-explosion.”

“This isn’t a game! What, so your daughter takes her life with an unraveller and leaves you to grieve for her, and your first thought is to do the same?”

“Stay out of it, Theta,” Koschei insists as he reaches for the unraveler. “It’s not like we’re at the Academy anymore. What do you even care? Can you honestly say my wife would care if I pulled the trigger?”

Theta swats away his hand. “You think that I wouldn’t?”

“We’re not children anymore,” Koschei insists, though perhaps with less malice than he’d like. “Schoolyard crushes don’t count.”

“I’m not talking about crushes.” Yaz sees Koschei’s burn and water like he’s staring directly into the sun and wonders how many times she’s worn that exact same expression. “I’m talking about the fact that living in a world without you would unravel me more than this thing ever could.”

“I…” Koschei opens his mouth, then closes it. “You don’t understand. You can’t understand how this feels. You can’t expect me to… to just pick up my old life like nothing’s happened.”

Theta pockets the unraveler, then grips Koschei’s hands so tightly that Yaz worries his bony fingers might break off. “Then don’t,” he says, his voice shaking with emotion. “Start a new life with me.”

Koschei pauses. Then he laughs, and it sounds like crying. “Be serious, Theta. There’d be a scandal, the Brightshores wouldn’t hear the end of it, I can’t…” He takes a deep breath that sends shudders throughout his body. “You know I can’t.”

“I am being serious. I’m already a walking scandal, and I’m sure if that were really the issue, you wouldn’t have even invited me to the funeral.” Yaz feels the Doctor sink to his knees and can’t help but think it’s so like them to choose the most grotesque venue imaginable for a marriage proposal, yet somehow manage to make it more heartfelt than any choreographed beachside wedding. “When we were children, we promised we would travel to every star in the universe together. And I’m going to hold you to that promise, even if it takes marrying you to do it.”

Koschei looks away in embarrassment, but the longing in his eyes is unmistakable. 

“I know you’re hurt, Koschei. I know you’re grieving. I want to help you, but only if you’ll let me in.”

Yaz has never seen the Master on the verge of tears before, not even close. So when he sinks down to the Doctor’s level, revealing the wet film around his eyes, she wonders if this would be the last time that the Doctor has ever made him cry.

“Fine,” he says. “I’ll stay for you, Theta. Just… just so long as you promise not to leave.”

The Master’s crying face is the last thing Yaz sees before a white light encroaches on the periphery of her vision and leaves her blind. Her heart pounds, wondering if this is a permanent effect to punish thieves, before the light rapidly fades and leaves her standing alone in the library alone with watering eyes and goosebumps down her arms.

So the Shobogans were right. With this, they could find the Looms, understand their inner workings, and destroy them for good. The Time Lords would never return—at least not in significant numbers to pose a threat. The Doctor’s children would live and die, and one day the Time Lord Citadel would crumble into dust.

She would forever be the Last of the Time Lords.

Yaz begins to pace around the library. She still had a few days before the Shobogans expected her answer. A few more days to come up with a solution. Maybe not the perfect one, but hopefully better than either betraying her best friend or letting an alien race born out of test tubes steamroll an indigenous population. 

With a pained look on her face and a heavy weight in her heart, Yaz slips the dial into the pocket of her jeans and hopes for the best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you can see, this fic now has an end in sight! I have every chapter basically planned out, and my goal is to post each Sunday so I can wrap it up by the time school starts back up. So for anyone interested in the timeline (and this is honestly for my benefit too, since I thrive off deadlines), this is my goal:
> 
> Chapter 12, Breath of Life - December 6th  
> Chapter 13, Sucked Into Your Orbit - December 13th  
> Chapter 14, Unravelling at the Seams - December 20th  
> Chapter 15, Serpent in the Garden - December 27th  
> Chapter 16, Blood in the Water - January 3rd  
> Chapter 17, First of the Time Lords - January 10th  
> Epilogue - January 17th  
>  ~~(plus a random one-off coda fic I've had knocking about in my head?? who can say👀 )~~
> 
> For any of my Winx readers... well, first off, what an unexpected surprise to see you on a Doctor Who fic, but second, I freaking swear that Spotlight isn't dead either; Chapter 2 is about halfway done, and I'll drop new chapters on the weeks I get ahead on Twin Suns. ~~(Plus an M-rated prequel to Damn the Dark, Damn the Light? Again, who's to say, but Damn the Dark has easily been my favorite piece of writing from 2020, so it's definitely likely 😉)~~
> 
> In short, I hate Christmas break, and fanfiction is my only escape 😅 
> 
> As always, thank you for reading!


	12. Breath of Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A reminder to please heed the tags as the story updates!

“Everyone’s still pissed at me and my granddad, aren’t they?” 

Aoka looks around at the unfriendly faces of the Shobogans passing them on the street; she tries waving to one, only to receive a hostile glare in reply. “What? Err... no, no,” she attempts to assure Ryan. “Well, okay, maybe a little, but to be fair, it doesn’t take a lot to piss people off these days.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, everyone’s a bit on edge recently,” she says as though it should be obvious. “Small things, mostly. Arguments over silly misunderstandings, you know. But... sometimes it’s more than that,” she admits quietly. “It’s like there’s something in the air, a cloud hanging over everyone. Even I feel it sometimes.”

Aoka notices Ryan’s worried expression and gently squeezes his hand. “It’s probably just the preparations for Otherstide that’s stressing everybody out,” she says with a smile, gesturing to the black banners and paper lanterns hanging from every building, from humble street stalls to the tallest crystal spires. She pauses a moment, waiting for some recognition in Ryan’s eyes. “You know, the harvest festival honoring one of Gallifrey’s founders? Coincides with the Doctor’s _birthday_?”

“Really? Didn’t know she had one.”

“Well, it’s only a myth, of course. Not sure if Time Lords even care about things like birthdays; must be dreadfully hard to keep track. Still,” she continues, giving Ryan a sidelong glance, “I’m surprised she didn’t mention it.”

Ryan shoves his hands into his jeans pockets. “Yeah, well, she keeps a lot to herself, you know?”

“Well, why shouldn’t she?” asks Aoka, billowy white sleeves brushing against Ryan as she swings her arms. “She’s a Time Lord. It’s not like the rest of us can ever understand a fraction of what goes on inside her head.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” he says with a sigh. He glances over at her, her clear grey eyes following the clouds floating overhead, slightly distorted through the Capitol’s glass bubble. “Hey, Aoka? What… what do you think of the Doctor?”

“The Doctor? Well, she’s wonderful, isn’t she? We wouldn’t be alive without her. The technology to rebuild the city, bring back wildlife, bioengineer food until harvest season comes, that all came from her. We owe her our lives, all of us.” 

“I still remember the first time I saw her,” she continues softly, “the day you all found us hiding in the TARDIS.” Aoka keeps her voice steady, but Ryan still notices her lower lip begins to tremble. “Being trapped down there for months, you don’t know what it’s like. Not just because it was cold, and dark, and cramped as a cobblemouse in a _draka_ pot. We didn’t think there’d be an end to it. We knew that even if there was someone, a Time Lord, still alive to rescue us, they probably wouldn’t even think to look. Our lives meant that little to them. 

“But then _she_ came, and she was so happy to see us. Like she had hoped and hoped but didn’t think it could be true, just like us. And the way she smiles at us like she doesn’t mind us being around, like it’s the most natural thing in the world for a Shobogan and a Time Lord to wave hello as they pass by… I mean, all the stories said she wasn’t like the other Time Lords, but we didn’t think she could be so similar to us. So yeah, I think she’s wonderful,” she finishes with a soft smile and a wink at Ryan. “Maybe the second most wonderful person I’ve ever met.”

Ryan chuckles. “Thanks. A-And you’re pretty great, too,” he says after a moment’s hesitation. He chews on his lip, wondering if she’ll be angry, but she just laughs and hangs on to his arm. 

“So, does everyone feel that way about the Doctor then?” asks Ryan.

“I’d be surprised to find someone who didn’t,” Aoka replies. “So yeah, shouting in her face and letting her collapse in front of everyone wasn't exactly a good look for either of you. Fortunately,” she continues with a mischievous grin, “we’re going someplace where no one else has to follow us.”

She pulls out a small remote from the pocket of her skirt and presses a button before dropping it on the ground in front of her - except, it never lands. Instead, it hovers a few inches above the ground and starts spinning, faster and faster, curved sheets of steel and gold fanning out until….

“Tada!” Aoka jumps on top of the large floating disc and holds out her hand to Ryan. “What do you think?”

“Woah,” says Ryan as he scrambles on board. “Proper hoverboard, this is.”

“Most advanced civilization in the known universe,” Aoka reminds him. “Don’t worry about falling off; there’s a built-in forcefield. Oh, and you might want to hold onto something,” she adds with a wink. 

Ryan has just enough time to sit down and grab hold of Aoka’s arm before a wave of her hand sends them hurtling forward, bobbing and weaving through buildings until they woosh through the gleaming bronze arch that separates the Capitol from the rest of Gallifrey. 

Aoka lifts her hand, and they start to build elevation. “Telepathic controls!” she shouts over the roaring wind in their ears. “Isn’t it amazing?”

Ryan lets out a whoop in reply as they breeze past the yawning chasm and Low Town just beyond it, and then there’s nothing but red fields and pale white wheat swaying in the wind. 

“This is what I spent those months in the TARDIS hub waiting for. Just sunlight, fresh air, and open skies.” A particularly strong gust of wind sends Aoka’s long dark hair whipping around her head like a tempest, and she decides to slow them down to cruising altitude. “Must look a lot different from what you’re used to, huh?” she asks as she lets her legs dangle off the edge of the hoverboard. 

“Yeah,” says Ryan as he looks down at the unfamiliar patchwork quilt of grasslands and plains and forests, with the yellow flower riverbed tying it all together like golden thread. He swallows a lump in his throat and casts his eyes about for some kind of distraction. “Hey, what’s that big desert over there?” he asks, pointing in the direction of silver-capped mountains surrounded by miles of orange dust. 

Suddenly, Aoka’s voice takes on a much more serious tone. “The Drylands.”

Ryan pulls a face. “Looks like it, yeah. Anyone used to live out there?”

“Only ‘people who don’t matter,’” Aoka says in air quotes. “At least that’s what Rassilon and the Council used to say when—”

“Hang on, Rassilon? Like that bloke with the statue next to the Doctor’s?”

“Yeah,” she says, giving him a hesitant look. “He was President before she deposed and exiled him, didn’t you know that?”

Ryan shakes his head. “What happened after that? Where did he go?”

“No idea.” Clouds pass over the suns, leaving the Drylands as grey and desolate as Earth’s moon. “Could be another planet, could be another universe. All I know is that there’s a forcefield around the Capitol to keep exiles from ever returning. But I think the shame and dishonor does a good enough job on its own.”

“But it’s only around the city?” Ryan asks. “So he could still be out there somewhere?”

“I guess so. Not a lot of places to go when you’re in a time-locked bubble universe. And for a Time Lord, the Drylands might as well be another plane of existence.” Aoka tilts her head. “Why’s it so important to you, anyway? Figured you’d be bored to death of Time Lord stuff by this point.”

“Sorry, it’s just… it’s hard, you know? She’ll rarely talk about that kind of thing, and when she does, it just goes over my head. Can never get a straight answer out of her.” He starts picking at an imaginary loose thread of his jumper. “Honestly, I was thinking about leaving the Doctor for a long time, even before all this.” 

Aoka stares at him like a befuddled owl. “You do realize she’s one of the most powerful beings in existence, right? That there are songs and stories and legends of her across every corner of the galaxy? I couldn’t even imagine giving up all that.”

“Guess myths are complicated when you meet them in person.” Ryan stares out at the distant mountain ranges and thinks of a picture he sent to Tibo, telling him it was the Rockies. “Travelling with the Doctor has been incredible, ‘course. Made me realize that there’s so much out there in the universe, stuff I never could’ve imagined before. But after a while… I don’t know, really. I guess you start to realize that the life you leave behind isn’t always gonna be there. Your friends, your family. Even the Earth. Could all disappear in a second, while you’re gone doing cannonballs on Jupiter or something.” His eyes flicker down to the still-scorched patches of earth below. “Guess you don’t need me to tell you that.”

Aoka shakes her head, equally solemn. “No,” she says, lost in a million scattered thoughts. “You don’t. Never really thought about it like that. Me, I’ve always wanted to see what else is out there. But now, knowing how much I could lose in one day… I think I’d always want to come home.”

“Everyone’s like that, I reckon,” says Ryan, “even if they don’t say it. The Doctor’s the last person I could see settling down anywhere, but seeing her here, how happy it makes her, it reminded me that everyone has somewhere they belong. And for me, that’s always gonna be the Earth.”

Aoka’s been steadily decreasing their altitude the whole time, to the point where they could reach out and skim the silver-leafed treetops. “So what’s been keeping you here?”

“Still care about her, I suppose. Changed my life for the better, all things considered.” He shifts closer to Aoka, until their thighs brush together. “And… there are people I’ve met here who I’ve started to care about, too.”

“Now _that’s_ more of what I was hoping for on this date,” Aoka teases as she lands the hoverboard in a tiny grove and alights in a single fluid motion. 

Ryan feels blood rise to his cheeks as he awkwardly slides off. “Aoka, I—”

“I know, I know, you’ll be going back to Earth soon,” she says, “but like you said, the world could fall apart at any moment, so why not make the most of the time we have together?” She grabs a handful of dark green berries off a bush and starts popping them into her mouth one by one. “Now come on, hot spring’s this way.”

Ryan looks down at his cotton jumper and faded jeans. “Oh, but I didn’t bring any swim trunks,” he says, then immediately wants to smack his forehead. _I really am new at this, aren’t I?_

“What a coincidence,” Aoka says lightly, not even bothering to look back, letting her sashaying hips do all the talking. “Neither did I.”

* * *

“There’s something troubling you, isn’t there, Yasmin?”

Yaz looks up from the trail of yellow flowers and smiles; she had secretly hoped he’d be here, after all. “It’s not like I come out here for much else,” she says wryly. 

She hadn’t seen him coming, never does; his footsteps are silent on the dry, cracked earth, and when he sits down next to her along the riverbank, there’s hardly a rustle. “The affairs of the Capitol,” the Shobogan man murmurs thoughtfully, his deep brown eyes regarding the domed city with the same regard one might have toward a cheap snowglobe. “I feel so fortunate to have removed myself from it all.”

“Sometimes I wish I could leave it all behind, too,” Yaz admits, hugging her knees to her chest. 

“Is there anything stopping you?” he asks, curious. “You are not of this world, after all.”

Yaz lets out a sigh she didn’t realize she had been holding. “I think it’s too late for me to back out; I’m too involved now.” She stretches her legs and tries to ignore the weight of the stolen dial digging into the back of her thigh. “There’s… there’s a choice I have to make. And I think I know what the choice has to be, but how do you make a choice that goes against the one person you care about more than anything?” In an instant, her cheeks turn bright pink. _Did I just admit that out loud?_

The Shobogan smiles kindly. “Perhaps this choice isn’t as bad as you think,” he reasons. “The Doctor considers herself a rebel, according to legends; surely, she would understand.”

“That obvious it’s her, huh?” asks Yaz with a weak chuckle. 

“You wouldn’t be the first human to find herself swept up in the Doctor. The last time she came to Gallifrey, she went through unimaginable horrors, defied every rule the Time Lords had, just to save an ordinary human girl.”

Yaz stares up at the burnt orange sky and decides to blame the glare of the suns for her watering eyes. “I can’t even imagine her doing something like that for me,” she whispers. 

“Even when she brought you all the way here? Surely she cares enough to let you share in her happiness, no?”

“ _Her_ happiness,” she scoffs. “That’s the problem. She’s up in her tower picking out baby clothes and choosing baby names while the rest of us are left trying to figure out how to live in this messed-up situation. It’s like she’s abandoned us.”

“And that hurts you,” the Shobogan says knowingly.

“Well, yeah!” Yaz says, indignant. “When I first met her, it was all ‘sorting out fair play across the universe.’ I thought she believed in the same things I did, in justice, in _truth._ But it turns out she’s so much different from what I imagined.” 

“And yet your feelings for her remain.”

Yaz chews her bottom lip. “Yeah. They do.”

The Shobogan rummages in the pockets of his black trousers and pulls out a small silver drone, like a glowing spider against his dark skin. With the press of a button, he releases it and watches it flit up and down the field of Flowers of Remembrance, gentle streams of water trailing in its wake. For several minutes, the sound of soft droplets against hard earth is all there is.

“These flowers have always fascinated me,” he tells Yaz in an effort to fill the silence. “In ancient times, our ancestors would grind them into a paste that would take them to euphoric heights when consumed; it is this opening of the mind that eventually gave them their name. But char them, boil them, expose them to any kind of heat, and they release a debilitating toxin that sickens all who consume it. Such a unique duality, to elate or crush the spirit in equal measure.”

Yaz furrows her brow. “And you’re saying the Doctor is like that?”

“I’m saying that there are sides of things, of people, that we would all like to willfully ignore. But expose anything to heat, to _pressure_ , and we can become something unrecognizable. The Doctor, I’d wager, is no exception to that.”

“I feel like I don’t recognize her at all sometimes,” Yaz admits. “But I still want to protect her, even if it’s wrong. What does that say about me?”

“From my viewpoint? It speaks to nothing except your strength of character. Like you, the Doctor faces a battle between her ideals and her heart. But whereas you are willing to face that battle head-on, her response is to run away and ignore that which would shatter her fragile happiness.”

Yaz nods in agreement, then stops. “How did you know that?” she demands. “I never said anything about what the Doctor was going through.”

The corners of his mouth twitch upwards. “Oh? Then you must have mentioned it in one of our conversations before.”

Yaz’s frown only deepens. That _sounds_ correct, surely. They’ve talked along this riverbank dozens of times before; it had to have come up at some point. But if that’s the case, why can’t she remember anything they’ve talked about? There exist only faint impressions, watercolor memories that blur the more she tries to focus on them, leaving her with only an explicable _trust_ in this man whose name she can’t even remember. 

He’s a farmer, she thinks, but somehow that doesn’t feel right, either. His white tunic doesn’t have a speck of dirt on it, and she’s never seen him in the fields with the others. She doesn’t know why she ever assumed he was a farmhand; the idea just seemed… easy. As if planted in her mind without her ever noticing.

When the Shobogan laughs, it produces a sound too immense for human lungs. “Tread carefully around the Time Lords, Yasmin Khan. For they walk in eternity, and mortal flesh can never sustain for long.”

Yaz blinks once, then twice. When she opens her eyes, there's nothing but a golden flower in her lap and an indent next to her in the grass.

* * *

“Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

The Master speaks in hushed tones, as if preparing to carry out some terrible deed, though in reality, that couldn’t be further from the truth. The dim, pulsing orange glow of the Looms illuminates his face like a halo before receding into an infinite darkness, and in that moment he’s so beautiful that the Doctor can’t help but reach out her hand, just to make sure he’s real. 

“I am,” she murmurs. “Three whole days of bed rest, just like you said. Well, more or less; I may have added a few hundred new settings to the mobile in the nursery while I was bored. But trust me, I feel fine now.”

The Master takes a step forward, as if initiating a dance, only the grave lines on his face betray his trepidation. “You _will_ tell me if something goes wrong,” he says, gripping her hand. “Just say the word, and we’ll stop.”

“Of course,” the Doctor assures him. His strong grip crushing her fingers is just another reminder of her frailty in this moment, a thought that would send her running were it anyone else standing with her. People - _humans_ \- always assumed this form of hers was weak and delicate, so she had taken it upon herself to constantly project strength, especially around her fam. 

But now that the illusion was broken, they didn’t know what to do around her. She could see it in their eyes, hear it humming in their minds, the never-ending stream of _is she alright, some weird alien thing I’m sure, oh it must be the baby, god if she faints again I’ll swear she’s from a Victorian novel…._

The Doctor shakes her head, blonde hair swishing across her shoulders. _Don’t think about them,_ she tells herself. _You have to focus._ So she looks up at the Master, who worries about her but in a different way, all soft pillows and warm soup and a fierce devotedness she used to resent but now depends on more than anything. Whereas her condition has pushed everyone else away, he is the only one who has remained close.

The Master opens his fist, revealing a tiny amber crystal. She takes a deep breath before picking it up, running her finger along its sharp edges and ignoring the expectant way he looks at her. 

It’s so much harder to do this without a sickly baby in front of her to propel her into action, but she closes her eyes and focuses her thoughts, and sure enough, the same golden light bubbles up from her core and out through her parted lips. She holds the crystal up to her face and marvels at how it sucks in the light like a magnet, growing ever so slightly brighter with each exhale. 

“You’re doing great, Theta,” the Master whispers, and she smiles at that. Idly, she wonders what the fam would make of her now, golden smoke leaking from her mouth, rivers of light pulsing beneath her skin, eyes consumed by white-hot stars. _This is who I am,_ she thinks with a heavy heart, _and doesn’t it all make sense now? All the questions you asked that I could never answer, because what would you do with them anyway? How could you possibly understand me when I don’t even understand myself? A lost child from a lost dimension, an enigma wrapped in a mystery. You think I’m something special, but I’m not. Just a question mark, nothing else._

Her arms must be growing tired, because the Master’s hands curve around hers, holding them steady so that she can keep the crystal aloft. He says something, she thinks, but there’s an ocean roaring around her head and she can’t make out the words. His touch slips away, and all she can bring herself to do is sigh, for if she is to drown then it would have always been alone, because _they leave me, they leave me, they always leave me…._

“I’m here.”

_Oh. Except for you._

She blinks, and her surroundings start to swim back into focus. “Come on, Theta,” says the Master as he wraps his arms around her. “You can do this, just a bit more. I’m here, I’ve got you, luv.”

The Doctor can feel her legs start to buckle with each breath. “I can’t,” she barely manages to say, her muscles like lead. “I can’t… can’t do this….”

“Yes, you can,” he insists, his deep brown eyes reflecting the light of the blazing woman before him. “You’re the Doctor; you’re strong enough for this. You’re strong enough for anything.”

“No…” The light from the Doctor’s lips starts fading away. “I don’t have enough….”

The Master’s eyes go wide. Twin black holes, so very, very hungry.

“You have _everything,_ ” he snarls.

Then he kisses her, and it’s like CPR, the Doctor thinks, only in reverse. He’s draining her somehow, tugging energy out of her lungs with each greedy gasp for air. She wants to pull away, but he’s the only thing keeping her vertical at the moment, and he’s always been an _excellent_ kisser. All she can think to do is kiss him back, hungry and desperate, until she lacks the strength for even that and falls limp in his arms.

After what feels like an eternity, the Master finally pulls away and lets the Doctor rest her head on his shoulder while he channels all that stolen energy into the crystal, until it burns like a star in his hand.

Perhaps it is a star, the Doctor wonders dazedly as inky black skies swirl at the edges of her vision. There’s a familiar heartbeat nearby, echoing through space, and she feels her body float closer, burying herself in the source of that sound to ward off the encroaching darkness.

There are words being murmured to her, telling her everything’s alright, before the nighttime rises up and carries her away.

-

“Wake up, Theta.”

The Doctor lifts her head, which was somehow resting on a velvet cushion, and sees the Master reach out to help her up. “What happened?” she asks breathlessly, brain still horribly foggy. 

“You fainted, luv, but that’s besides the point. _Look_.”

The Loom he points to seems unremarkable at first, but as the Doctor approaches, she notices the tiny amber crystal now embedded within a control panel of clockwork gears and silvery wires near the base. And floating in the water, what might be mistaken as a trick of the light to less unobservant eyes, a small but growing clump of cells….

Amazed, the Doctor presses her hand to the glass. “Our child,” she breathes. “Our second child.”

“It worked,” says the Master as he comes to stand at her side. “Against all reason, against all belief, against all hope. Because of you, my dear.”

The Doctor watches awestruck as tiny bubbles float up from the bottom of the Loom, gently bobbing the cells up and down in the water, and places a hand to her stomach. What’s been happening inside her for months is now out in the open for all to see, and though she has seen stars ignite and galaxies wither, nothing can compare to this.

_This is what we are capable of,_ she marvels. _Together._

“Now,” says the Master, pulling her close, “the work _really_ begins.”


	13. Sucked Into Your Orbit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for mentions of suicide

“Oi, not you again.”

Yaz grins sheepishly at Graham, who’s just in the process of replenishing medical gauze from the cabinet. “‘Fraid it is. Got another one for you. Caught trying to tear down a statue in the eastern plaza, beat his hands bloody.” She waves the Shobogan inside, who glares moodily at Yaz and everyone inside the med bay but remains stubbornly silent.

“Well, at least he wasn’t trying to tear down somebody else,” Kathra sighs as she pokes her head out of the washroom. “I’ll take him, Graham, don’t worry.”

“That’s the fifth one this week,” Graham says to Yaz, shaking his head in disbelief. “If they’re not destroying something they’ve just spent weeks rebuilding, they’re having a go at each other in the middle of the street in broad daylight. Something’s not right.”

“I agree,” says Yaz. “This is way more than a few isolated instances.”

“What do you reckon we should do? Get the Doc involved?”

“Maybe? Not sure what she’d do, though.” 

Graham shrugs and peels off his gloves. “She hasn’t taken maternity leave from being President, has she? She’d know better than us, anyway, if she feels like being honest," he says bitterly. "Unless your police instincts have any theories?”

Yaz shakes her head. “There’s nothing linking these people. Different ages, different genders, different backgrounds. There’s the collective trauma of having your entire planet destroyed, but if that’s the case, this kind of thing should have started happening months ago, don’t you think?”

“There’s gotta be something,” Graham insists. He watches Kathra blot away some of the Shobogan’s blood with a cotton swab; he can see her trying to make lighthearted conversation like she always does, but he doesn’t seem to respond. His head just twitches every so often, and his eyes drift out focus, like he’s listening to something besides Kathra’s voice. “We can’t just let this kind of thing get out of control. Thankfully no one’s been seriously hurt yet, but that could change if we don’t get to the bottom of this.”

“Way to jinx it, Graham,” Yaz laughs tonelessly once she sees Von burst into the medical wing. Her hand reflexively flies to the inside pocket of her leather jacket where the suns dial sits as a physical weight on her chest. Two more days to decide, she reminds herself. 

Fortunately, Von doesn’t seem to notice Yaz’s agitation, perhaps because he’s incredibly agitated himself. “Yaz, we need your help ASAP. Maybe yours, too, Graham, though I’m not sure if there’s anything you can do at this point.”

“Woah, what’s happening, son?” asks Graham.

Von glances nervously at the young Shobogan within earshot. “I don’t want to alarm anyone, but…” He leans in and whispers in Yaz’s ear. She sucks in a breath.

“Yaz? What’s wrong?”

“We’ll be right there,” she tells Von with a noticeable edge to her voice, before turning her attention to Graham. “But first, we’re calling the Doctor.”

* * *

“Again, it’s just a slight fever, my lord, nothing more.”

“You will make sure of it,” the Master orders Reneth. “Take every blood sample, run every scan, wrack every nerve fiber in that feeble Shobogan brain of yours until you’re certain that she’s well.”

Reneth scowls, and the Master is about to berate her for it when he notices the Doctor opening her eyes. She looks around, sees Reneth and the Master hovering at her bedside, and lets out a soft groan. “Again?” she asks. “How long was I out for?”

“Three hours, my love.”

Her eyes go wide. “Three? You’re sure about that?”

“Reasonably more sure than you,” he replies, fighting to keep his voice even. “How do you feel?”

“Me? Oh, right as rain, like usual.”

The Master folds his arms.

“Really, I’m fine! Could do with some water, though.” 

“You heard her,” he says to Reneth, who rolls her eyes and departs in a huff. 

“You shouldn’t talk to her like that,” the Doctor scolds, but the Master pays her no mind. 

“Oh, Theta,” he whispers as he finds a spot on the bed, careful not to jostle her, and presses the back of his hand to her forehead. “I never would have asked for your regeneration energy if I had known it would make you ill.”

The Doctor smiles and reaches up to gently cup his face. “It’s alright,” she assures him. “It’s just another regeneration drain. Nothing to worry about.”

“No, it’s not just that. You’ve had two drains in the past three days; it’s not normal.”

“Maybe for regular Time Lords it’s not normal,” the Doctor wonders aloud, as she threads her fingers through his hair in an effort to soothe him. “Most Time Lord babies only need enough regeneration energy to replicate twelve regenerations, but maybe our child just needs a little more.”

The Master sighs and closes his eyes in response to her touch, but deep lines stay carved into his face. “I still shouldn’t have risked it. It was foolish of me.”

“Do... do you want to stop?” the Doctor asks tentatively. “My body’s already used to producing excess levels of regeneration energy during pregnancy. If we wait until afterwards, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to generate enough.”

“I’m… not sure,” the Master admits. “First, we have to make sure you’re alright. But we definitely have to go slower from now on. You’re under enough physical strain as it is.”

“Relax, Koschei. I’m pregnant, not dying.” To prove it, she sits up, throws off the blankets, and presses her lips to his with enough force to temporarily push him off balance. 

Her skin is too warm, he thinks worriedly, but the comforting weight of her arms draped around his neck quickly banish those thoughts to the furthest recesses of his mind. He leans into the kiss so that their foreheads brush against each other, and for a fraction of a second, he can feel the sparks of her psychic wavelength dance beneath her skin. 

The Master hesitates. She hasn’t opened up their psychic connection in weeks; there’s no reason she would suddenly change her mind now. Still, he can’t help but knock…. 

In all likelihood it’s the fever weakening her mental defenses, but he can’t bring himself to care. Because when the door to her mind swings open, it’s like stumbling into an embrace from the sun. The Master has always reveled in self-loathing, but when their minds swirl together, he’s able to let those parts of himself fall away and allow sunlight to fill in the empty spaces. It doesn’t even matter if the intensity of it burns him, not when it’s _her_.

_I’ve missed this,_ he thinks while leaving a trail of kisses down her neck. Even though their bodies have embraced like this a hundred times, it’s his mind that really needs to be held together. _I’ve missed you._

_You have me_ , she answers, tangling her hands in his unkempt hair. _I’m right here._

And she is; she’s _everywhere_. Hands scrambling to leave no inch of his skin untouched, thoughts enveloping his with syrupy sunshine. He can feel her pleasure in addition to his own, creating a deliciously addictive feedback loop that leaves him just as flushed as she is. 

He cradles the back of her head as he gently lays her down, all while barely stopping to breathe in between kisses. There was a time when he would have been rougher with her, leaving hickeys and bruises to serve as a physical reminder of his presence, but as his free hand curves around her swollen belly, he realizes that there’s no need this time around. While a part of her DNA lives inside him, fueling an insatiable hunger for immortality that has plagued him since boyhood, a part of himself now grows within her, too. She may be like a god, and yet he’s given her something that no other mortal being can.

“Koschei?” she whispers aloud, brushing away a stray tear from his cheek that he hadn’t even noticed until now. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I….” The Master struggles to put the feeling into words. He has everything he’s ever wanted: freedom from the Time Lords, the Doctor at his side, the promise of children after so many centuries. He has everything worth having, and it terrifies him, because the universe has never been in the habit of granting his deepest desires. It’s only a matter of time before everything falls apart.

Thankfully, he doesn’t have to put it into words; the Doctor can understand his fears as if they’re her own. _It’s alright, my darling,_ she tells him. _The universe owes me a favor or two._

Relieved laughter bubbles to the surface, and it is in that moment that the Master vows to stay with the Doctor, to hold her and love her and keep her safe, until the entire damned universe has to pry his life out of his hands.

_No matter the cost_ , he adds darkly.

“Doctor! You have to come quick, there’s… oh.”

The Master grits his teeth at the sight of Yaz bursting through the door, Graham following right on her heels. “Surely _knocking_ is still a custom on Earth, no?”

Already the Doctor’s severed their connection, leaving him cold and shivering outside her mental fortress. He wants to grab her hand and return her attention to him, but the yapping from her human pets has already drawn her away. “Yaz? Graham? What’s going on?”

At least Yaz has the decency to look somewhat embarrassed as the Doctor straightens up and makes sure her clothes are still in place. “A Shobogan was found dead in the chasm between Low Town and the Citadel. We’re not sure what happened yet; Von just found the body.”

“And what do you expect her to do about it?” the Master demands. “I should hope you don’t need a doctor to tell if someone’s dead or alive.”

“We just thought she should come and take a look, is all,” Graham answers coldly. “Assumed she’d take at least _some_ interest.”

“She’s sick,” the Master growls. “She should be resting, not running across the Capitol to gape at dead bodies.”

Yaz raises an eyebrow. “Right, ‘cause that’s _definitely_ what she was doing when we showed up.”

“For Omega’s sake, enough,” says the Doctor, standing with a slight wobble that escapes the humans’ notice, but not the Master’s. “Of course I’m coming.”

“Doctor—”

“No, Master. You can either come with me or stay here, but either way, I’m going.”

Clearly outnumbered, the Master simply groans and falls into step behind her as Yaz and Graham lead her outside. On the way, Shobogans swarm around her like flies, showering her with well wishes. The Master wants to shoo them away, but the Doctor indulges them with awkward waves and kindly smiles. Envy burning like bile in his throat, he rests his hand on the small of her back and steers her away from them. It’s exhausting to watch her dote on lesser lifeforms like this, as if they compare to her in any way, as if they’re capable of anything other than collapsing into decay at a moment’s notice.

Case in point, he thinks as they approach the outskirts of the Citadel, where a lanky, frizzy-haired Shobogan boy watches over a bruised and battered corpse laying on a straw mat. When he glimpses the arriving party, he hastily inclines his head. “My lord, my lady,” he mumbles. 

“No need for that,” the Doctor insists, even though it’s a habit none of the Shobogans have managed to break yet. “Can you tell us what happened here?”

“It’s unclear, ma’am,” he answers, looking down at the body sorrowfully. “His name was Ganin Larkhaven, aged 23. One of the drones found his body in the ravine about an hour ago; it seems he’s been dead for longer. Can’t be more than a day, though.”

“Is he the first person to have died like this?” asks the Doctor.

“Yes, ma’am. He’s the first person to have died since Oblivion, period.”

The Doctor kneels down beside the corpse, despite the Master’s protests. “No one saw what happened?”

The Shobogan runs a hand through his frizzy brown hair. “Not yet. He doesn’t have any family members left, and Yaz and I didn’t want to make the news known to everyone until we heard from you, ma’am.”

“Is there anything you can do, Doc?” asks Graham, who can’t help feeling like a naive child looking to a parent for guidance. Though he’s seen his fair share of dead Shobogans, the isolated nature of this death strikes a chord with him. It feels too much like Grace’s death. Untimely, preventable, just _wrong_. He couldn’t have stopped a global genocide, but _somebody_ , he feels, could have prevented this _._

The Doctor places her hand to Ganin’s bruised temple and inhales sharply. Except for the Master, the others watch her face anxiously as she frowns and closes her eyes, searching for something beyond their realm of understanding. Eventually, she looks up at Graham and shakes her head. “It’s too late; there’s no imprint of his brain activity left. I can’t get a read on the final point in his timestream.”

“Von, do you know if anyone else was supposed to be in this area?” asks Yaz. “Someone working on the bridges, maybe?”

Von shakes his head. “No, those were finished last week. No one would have any reason for leaving the Capitol.”

The Doctor’s hand lingers on his swollen black eye. “Would anyone have a reason for wanting to hurt him?”

Yaz and Von share a sideways glance. “He had been getting into fights with other Shobogans,” Yaz mentions. “It could have been an argument that turned south.”

“All the way out here?” asks Graham. “Seems unlikely, if you ask me. But then again, I can’t think of any other reason why he’d be here.”

“Jumping into the chasm is a common method of suicide for Shobogans,” Von mentions softly. “Ganin clearly wasn’t in a healthy frame of mind for weeks, always having outbursts and mood swings, so it wouldn’t surprise me.”

“Well, he’s dead either way,” the Master remarks callously. 

The Doctor glares at the Master, even as he reaches out to help her stand. “We’ll have to arrange a burial,” she says, ignoring a dizzy spell from the sudden movement. “I’ll inform the others about his death.”

Everyone nods except for Yaz, who stares at the Doctor in open hostility. “That’s it?” she demands. “That’s all you can do?”

Still keeping his arms wrapped around the Doctor to steady her, the Master rolls his eyes. “What did you expect, child? We’re Time Lords, not miracle workers.”

“I expected you to do something!” she shouts at the Doctor. “You’re not even questioning what happened to him?”

The hurt in the Doctor’s eyes makes Yaz almost regret her outburst. “Yaz,” she begins gently, “it doesn’t sound like there was any foul play here. It’s… it’s a tragedy, but suicide isn’t unheard of on Gallifrey, like Von said.”

“Yeah? And why do you think that is? It’s because the Time Lords used to treat Shobogans like dirt! And now they have to watch it happen all over again!” 

After so much time spent dealing with the Doctor’s false bravado, seeing her look visibly confused is almost laughable. “Yaz, what are you talking about? If people are unhappy, why didn’t they say anything?”

“Because… because…. because you’re you!” Yaz cries out in frustration. “Because you don’t even realize that you’re this whole universe all on your own, and that anyone who gets close to you gets sucked into your orbit.”

Yaz feels the weight of the suns dial pressing against her chest, and a profound disquiet within her is now clamoring to be heard. “Do you even _care_ that he’s dead? That he was so angry or upset or hopeless in the Gallifrey you rebuilt that it drove him into a ravine? Or have you watched so many Shobogans die that it doesn’t matter to you anymore?”

The Doctor’s eyes dart to the stream of golden flowers, glaringly visible even from several miles away. “Of course it matters to me,” she insists, “but I can’t bring him back. We can ask people if they know anything about his death, but I’m not going to start interrogating everyone. Our numbers are so low already; even if someone did hold a grudge against him, I refuse to believe that any Gallifreyan would stoop to murder.” 

“Right,” Yaz laughs mirthlessly, “because that’s _your_ job. Both of you.”

Alarmed, the Doctor looks to Von, the only one who doesn’t know the truth; meanwhile, the Master lets her go and stalks toward Yaz with murder in his eyes. “Say that again, child,” he growls, “and you’ll find out just how right you are.”

“Alright, hold it, hold it!” shouts Graham, stepping defiantly between Yaz and the Master. “We don’t need two deaths today, do we? Now, the Doctor’s obviously not feeling well, so the Master is going to take her back; meanwhile, the rest of us will find whoever was closest to Ganin and see what we can do about a funeral. And _all_ of us are going to cool off before we say or do something we regret, understood?”

“No,” says the Doctor, stepping toward Yaz. “Yaz, please, I don’t want to have another argument like this. I… I understand you’re upset with me. And you have a right to feel that way.”

Yaz looks up, hopeful.

“I’ve put a terrible burden on you. On all of you,” she says with a nod to Graham, who lets down his guard and tentatively smiles in approval.

Yaz sighs and uncrosses her arms. “It has been hard, yeah,” she admits. “I’m glad you can acknowledge that, at least.”

The Doctor nods, her wide hazel eyes brimming with a regret that Yaz can only assume is utterly sincere. “I never should have asked you to keep a secret like this. I thought, maybe that you would….” She smiles one of those all-too-familiar smiles, like she’s hiding ashes in her mouth, and shakes her head. “But now I see how wrong I was,” she says as she takes Yaz’s hand. “And there’s only one thing I can do to fix it.”

In hindsight, Yaz thinks, she should have noticed something was amiss. The fact that the Master hadn’t said a word of protest in all of this, or that the Doctor would never willingly touch human skin for longer than strictly necessary, or that their eyes would flicker to one another in that eerily silent telepathic communication. Or perhaps she should have known from the very beginning. After all, the Doctor _never_ admitted when she was wrong.

There’s a shout, then Von crumples to the ground at the Master’s feet.

“It’s alright,” says the Doctor as Yaz starts screaming, “it won’t hurt a bit, I promise.” 

The Doctor’s grip is strong, but Yaz manages to pull away, stumbling backwards into Graham. Hand in hand, they slowly back away from the Time Lords, all too aware of the yawning chasm less than a meter behind them. 

“Goodness, is this how they always are, luv?” the Master says with a predatory grin. “Or do you finish it before they have the chance to run?”

“Doc, what the _hell_ do you think you’re playing at?” Graham demands. 

“It’s just a memory wipe,” says the Doctor, still approaching them in the same way one would an injured animal. “You’ll go to sleep, and when you wake up, you’ll be perfectly fine. Better than fine, really. You’ll have forgotten anything about what really happened to Gallifrey.”

“You’re going to take away our memories?” Yaz shouts in disbelief. “You can’t just do that!”

“I’m sorry, but this is the only way,” the Doctor pleads with them, and the genuine sorrow in her eyes hurts Yaz more than the betrayal itself. “I only wish I had done this sooner.”

The Master rolls his eyes. “There’s no use in trying to get through to them, Doctor. The best thing you can do for them is to get it over with quickly.”

Then he grabs Graham by the arm and yanks him away from the edge of the chasm. After making sure to pin both his arms, the Master presses his fingers to Graham’s temple and looks at the Doctor expectantly. 

“You know this isn’t right,” Yaz accuses her, hands balled into fists at her sides. “If we’re really your friends, you won’t do this.”

“This is the _only_ way for us to be friends,” the Doctor replies. “Don’t you see that?”

“No, this is the _easiest_ way,” admonishes Graham. “You wipe our memories, and we go back to charades and movie nights, is that what you think will happen? We’ll be just like those Shobogans who think you’re so wonderful, who put their trust in you because they don’t know any better. But _you’ll_ know, every time you look at us, and if the guilt isn’t enough to tear you apart, then you may as well go ahead and wipe away every last trace of the time we had together.”

The Master notices her wince at that last suggestion. “I can do them both,” he offers softly. “But you’ll have to hold her still.”

Yaz can hear blood pound in her ears, and wonders why she hasn’t tried to run yet. Maybe because there wouldn’t be a point. She hears a lonely gust of wind whistle over the chasm behind her and for a second wonders if she could bring herself to do it, if it would be better than living a lie against her will. 

When the Doctor grabs her hand once more, dragging her away from the abyss like she can hear Yaz’s thoughts, Yaz thinks how it’s so like the Doctor to pull her out of the event horizon of a black hole and into the orbit of the sun. As if she’d fare any better falling than burning. 

“They all leave in the end,” the Master reminds the Doctor, whose fathomless hazel eyes beg Yaz for forgiveness. “I’ve watched it happen to you countless times. At least this way they’ll leave you alive, and that’s better than most. Admit it, my love, you know it’s true.”

Yaz’s heart squeezes painfully tight as the Doctor wraps her hand around both of Yaz’s wrists. “And to think there was a time I looked up to you,” she whispers, voice trembling with anger and heartbreak and a dozen other emotions she can’t bring herself to name. “What a disappointment you are.”

The Doctor’s breath hitches and Yaz closes her eyes, bracing herself for a dark void to wash over her mind. 

Then without warning, the Doctor steps away. “Let him go, Master,” she whispers. 

“But you know they’ll just—”

“Release him, Koschei,” she says, louder. Anguished.

_Ashamed,_ Yaz dares to hope. 

The Master’s face is unreadable as he steps away and watches his wife nervously approach her companions. “Yaz, Graham, please, I’m—”

“You stay the hell away from us,” Yaz snarls, backing away and dragging Graham along with her. “And don’t you dare try to apologize for what you did.”

The Doctor hangs her head. When the Master goes to comfort her, she shrugs him off and pushes him away. Then she fishes under her collar for a chain with an unassuming silver key, which she offers up to Yaz. 

“Take my TARDIS. Tell her to activate Emergency Protocol 13. She’ll handle the rest.”

Yaz frowns but takes the key anyway. She squeezes it in her fist, hard enough to feel the grooves dig into her palm. “So that’s it then?” she asks, fighting back tears. “You’re sending us away?”

Yaz has never heard the Doctor sound so defeated. “That’s what you’d like, isn’t it?”

_I have no idea_ , she thinks despairingly. 

“Will you tell anyone?” the Doctor asks in a somber voice, still unable to look either of them in the eye. 

“Doubt any of them would believe us anyway,” says Graham, equally melancholy. “Not unless it came from you.”

Meanwhile, Yaz keeps turning the key over and over in her hand, half-expecting it to disappear along with the rest of this nightmarish day. “Is this really goodbye?” she whispers.

The Doctor can’t bring herself to answer; instead, she turns away and retreats into the Citadel, the Master following close behind. Yaz can hear their voices blend from English to Gallifreyan, and then, with a gust of wind kicking up orange dust, they’re gone.

“Von,” Yaz remembers, and she rushes over to his still unconscious body. “Graham, can you check if he’s hurt?”

After a few seconds of poking and prodding, Graham shakes his head. “He’s alright, Yaz. Just asleep, like the Doctor said.”

“That’s good,” says Yaz, trying to convince herself more than anything. “That’s really, really good….”

She doesn’t even notice she’s crying until Graham pulls her into a hug. It’s an ugly sort of crying, too; she’s sure she must make for some police officer now, as her nose runs and her shoulders tremble uncontrollably. “What are we going to do, Graham?” she chokes out as they kneel together in alien dirt, on the outskirts of an alien city, with alien suns burning their human skin. 

“We’re going to find Ryan, make sure he’s alright,” Graham says calmly as he rocks her back and forth. “And then….” He places a hand over her fist, still clutching the key to the TARDIS. “Then we’ll….”

Yaz shakes her head; it’s better if he doesn’t say it. If he never says it, maybe it will never come true.

Yaz startles as Von groans and slowly opens his eyes. “Huh? What’s going on?” His eyes go wide when he notices streak marks down her face. “Shit, Yaz. What happened?”

She opens her mouth but finds she doesn’t have the words, so instead she unzips her jacket pocket and pulls out the suns dial. “Here,” she says, pressing it into his hand. “Take it, just take it.”

“Yaz? I… I don’t understand.”

_Neither do I,_ she thinks, tilting her head back to stare up at the burnt orange sky. Maybe the last orange sky she’d ever see.

“Von,” she says, fighting to keep her voice from breaking, “I think we’re going home.”

* * *

When the Master finds the Doctor again, several hours later, she’s down in the Looming Chamber, watching the cells of their growing child divide and multiply in the water. In the dim orange light, he can see the stark contrast of dark circles under her eyes, made more prominent by the fact she hardly blinks, as if afraid their child will disappear if she closes her eyes. 

Then she turns her head his way, and her eyes seem to inflate with yearning, dark and desperate and gnawing. “Koschei,” she breathes, hurrying to his arms. “My Koschei.”

“You did the right thing,” he tells her while carding his hands through her hair. “You know they never belonged here.”

The Doctor nods, her head tucked into the crook of his neck. “It’s just us now,” she murmurs. “And that’s alright, as long as you’re here.”

He presses a soft, reassuring kiss to the crown of her head. “I’m yours, Doctor, always have been.”

_I know._

It takes the Master a few seconds to register that her lips never moved; when he does, he stares down at her in abject shock. “Doctor?”

The Doctor coyly smiles back. _Contact, my love._

The Master hesitates. Then:

_As if you ever need to ask._

Both Time Lords sigh in relief as their connection opens once more, into a constellation of shared memories that flow together into a single all-consuming light. _Our minds were not made to be alone,_ they think as one, and it’s the closest thing to peace they’ve ever known.

_I was afraid,_ she confesses, detangling her thoughts from his for just a moment. _I dreamt…_

Dark water pools around their ankles but fails to rise any higher, so insignificant now in the light of their bond. _I dreamt that you were the one who hurt me, so I hid my mind from yours, but now I know that could never be true, not when I need you so much._

Regret spreads like a chill to the very tips of their fingers. _I would_ never _hurt you, never again. If it really is a vision of the future, I’ll protect you from whatever comes._

_I know you will. My beautiful Koschei._

When she kisses him, fierce and possessive, he wonders how any human could hope to withstand her. She’s always been a force of nature, and in that moment she is the Storm and the Fire and the Universe itself, beautiful and terrifying to behold.

_My Theta_ , he thinks as her hungry kisses trail down his neck. _My lovely Theta, finally mine…._

_Never leave me,_ the demand rings throughout every corner of his mind. _I never want to be alone again._

_We will have eternity,_ he promises. _Here, together, with our children._

A pause. Four hearts pounding in the dark.

_Then make it happen._

She pulls away, and the dark hunger that burns in her irises is like looking in a mirror. Shaking with impatience, she fumbles for his hand and presses a crystal into his palm.

The Master’s eyes widen. _Theta… are you sure you have enough?_

Hazel gives way to golden flames, yet somehow, even they fail to burn away the tears.

_It’s all I have left._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just thought I'd mention that I've started my own [tumblr](https://mira-meraki.tumblr.com/) page! Depending on how far ahead I write, I was thinking of posting little updates and previews for my various fanfictions. Or if you just feel like chatting about Doctor Who, say hi!
> 
> As always, thanks for reading!


	14. Unraveling at the Seams

The first thing Yaz does when she gets back to their apartment is barricade the door.

“Son, pack a bag,” Graham shouts while Yaz grabs one of their kitchen chairs and shoves it under the doorknob. “We’ve got to leave, right now.”

Ryan stumbles out of his bedroom, phone in one hand and joystick in the other. “Where are we going? Outside the Capitol?”

“We’re leaving Gallifrey,” says Yaz after piling a few more chairs in front of the door. “Open the voice recording app on your phone.”

“Yaz, what the fuck is going on—”

“We’ll explain everything in a second, just do it!”

Scared and confused, Ryan turns to Graham as he joins them in the living room with a pair of rucksacks and a pile of clothes, which he deposits on their sofa. “Just listen to what she says, Ryan.”

With ever so slightly shaking hands, Ryan unlocks his phone and hits record.

“The Doctor and the Master tried to erase our memories,” Yaz begins, as calmly as she can manage. “They cornered me and Graham near the edge of the Citadel because they didn’t want the truth to get out about what really happened on Oblivion Day. The truth is that the Master wiped out nearly all life on Gallifrey using a neurotoxin in the water that drove people insane and made them start killing each other; the Doctor knew the whole time and is trying to cover it up. If you’re listening to this recording and have no idea what it means, that means they’ve gotten to you. To us.” Yaz gulps. “If that’s the case, then run. Just _run_.”

Ryan hits stop on his phone. “Fucking hell.”

“Make sure you save that recording,” says Yaz as she starts helping Graham pack, “and send it to all of us as a backup. Set up an alert so that it pops up on your lock screen every fifteen minutes in case we get stopped on our way out.”

“Wait, wait, so we’re leaving the _planet_? How are we going to do that?”

“The Doctor gave me the key to her TARDIS and told us to leave,” she explains, “but she could change her mind any minute. We have to get out of here before that happens.”

“Wait, so how come she gave you the TARDIS?”

“She… she changed her mind at the last second,” says Yaz. “She couldn’t go through with it.”

Ryan starts pacing back and forth. “Okay, so if she doesn’t _want_ to wipe our memories, why are we running away?”

“The Doctor’s changed,” says Graham, pulling out an old cheese and pickle sandwich from one of the pockets and replacing it with a pair of socks. “She’s not the same person we jumped on board with two years ago. I’m sorry, Ryan, but we can’t trust her, not after this.”

“So we’re just going to leave everything how it is? ‘Cause in case you forgot, it’s a mess out there. The Shobogans are this close to a riot, the Doctor looks like she could fall over any minute, and no one except us knows about the guy who committed genocide just walking about the place like he owns it.”

“We did our best to help, and look where it’s gotten us,” Graham points out. “We’re way out of our depth if we stay here any longer.”

Ryan frowns, worry building in his chest. “Yaz, you don’t really want to leave, I know you don’t.”

A brief scowl crosses Yaz’s face, and she starts forcefully shoving things into her bag. “You heard Graham, we’re not needed here. Not wanted,” she mutters as an afterthought.

“She’s sick,” Ryan tries again, his voice barely above a murmur. “You know she is. We can’t leave her like this.”

Yaz stops for a moment and swallows hard. “She has her _husband_ to take care of her,” she says, unable to look Ryan in the eye. “She’ll be fine.”

“She _won’t_ , though,” Ryan insists. “Tell her, granddad.”

Yaz turns to Graham, who looks as though he’d rather be anywhere else. “A couple days ago, when she fainted in the plaza, I heard her kid crying for help inside my head. Like some kind of Time Lord telepathy, I suppose. I know that sounds crazy, but I swear it’s the truth. Never heard anyone sound so scared in my life. Now, I’d have no idea what to make of that, except… well… has she told either of you about the nightmares she’s been having?”

Equally confused, Ryan and Yaz shake their heads.

Graham massages his temple, deliberately avoiding eye contact with either of them. “Remember when she first started having those regeneration drains? Well, that’s when the dreams started, too. The same dream over and over, apparently. Where she’s in some creepy forest on Gallifrey and starts drowning in a lake.”

Yaz raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, and?”

“The Master’s the one who pulls her under.”

“So what, that’s like a vision of the future or something?” Ryan asks.

Graham shrugs. “Might be, according to her.”

“And so you were just gonna _leave her anyway_?”

“Look,” says Graham as he resumes packing, “of course I’m worried about her. But she’s made her choice, alright? She’s chosen to stay with him, and that means she trusts him. And if that’s her best judgment….”

Yaz sits motionless on the far edge of the sofa, hands folded in her lap, and whispers, “Then she deserves to get hurt.”

Ryan stares in disbelief. “What?”

“I mean it,” she says defiantly, although the slight tremble in her voice would say otherwise. “We can’t keep catching her - literally. Maybe he secretly wants to kill her, maybe he doesn't. I honestly have no idea anymore. Either way, she’s got to take the fall for the choices she’s made.”

“Oh yeah?” asks Ryan, folding his arms like a disapproving parent. “And is that what she did all the times we went off on our own and made dumb decisions? Whenever there’s some mud witches or a space racist or killer Amazon robots, she always puts herself between them and us. I’m not saying she’s been perfect, ‘cause she definitely hasn’t been. But she’s always done her best to protect the people she cares about. She’s like family now. And if nan were here now, she’d say you always look out for family.”

After a long moment of silence, Graham sighs heavily and stares up at the ceiling, as if trying to pierce the heavens for guidance. “I suppose you’re right, son,” he finally relents. “Your nan would be proud.”

The tension in Ryan’s shoulders instantly melts away. “Thank you, granddad.”

“Still,” Graham continues, looking down at the clothes still strewn across the sofa, “I’m not sure we can just hide here in this apartment while we figure out our next move.”

Ryan nods. “Then let’s go to the Drylands.”

“The what?” Yaz and Graham ask in unison.

Ryan can’t help but grin. _Now we’re getting somewhere._ “The Drylands,” he repeats as he clears a space on the sofa to sit down. “It’s this big desert outside the Capitol. Aoka said Rassilon might be exiled there.”

“Hang on,” says Yaz, getting sucked into the conversation despite her best attempts at staying sullen and aloof. “He was the old president, right? What’s he supposed to do now?”

“Help us?” Ryan suggests. “If we bring back to the Capitol, maybe there’s… I don’t know, some Time Lord solution that can fix everything? At least the Doctor and the Master might actually listen to him.”

Graham frowns. “But if he never left the planet, would he even be alive right now? You saw what the Master did to this place.”

“Not sure,” Ryan admits. “But he’s a Time Lord. If he’s half as clever as the Doctor, he could’ve found a way.”

“Well, you’d have to be twice as clever to find him out there,” says Yaz, prickling at his complimenting the Doctor. “Von and I do weekly patrols around Low Town and we’ve never picked up any life signals out there.”

“Yeah, well, there’s a limited range on those scanners, right?” Ryan asks. “Maybe if we attached it to one of the construction drones and flew it over the Drylands, we could find him.”

Graham rests his elbows on his knees and hunches over in thought. “It’s a longshot,” he says finally, “and it’s a risk. Probably take us days to find anything, if he’s even alive on Gallifrey at all. But, it’s not impossible. And that’s enough for me.”

Ryan squeezes Graham’s hand. “Thank you, granddad. For giving her another chance.” 

When Graham looks at his grandson, it's one of mourning, not of kindness. “I'm not giving her anything," he corrects Ryan. "I'm doing this for you."

Meanwhile, Yaz watches the pair with a war drum in her chest and a burning in her throat. “I can’t,” she manages to say, using every police tactic in the book to keep her voice level. “I can’t give her that.”

Graham watches her worriedly. “Yaz…”

“She _betrayed_ us, Graham. You saw her. We’re not her family; we’re her _puppets_. Just something to reset when we don’t play along. No, I can’t forgive her for that, not ever.”

Ryan tries to grab Yaz’s arm as she stands up, but she jerks away and heads for the door.

“Stay here if you like,” she tells them, gripping the TARDIS key in one hand and the doorknob in the other, “but I’m going home.”

* * *

They were going to need another cot.

Night had long since draped itself over the Capitol, swaddling the nursery in soft blue shadow. Rows of stuffed toys blend together into faceless sentinels, while painted silver stars come alive in the faint moonlight that filters through pale blue curtains. Plush rugs and blankets soften every hard surface and absorb what little sounds emanate from the Citadel’s occupants. The quiet feels like fresh powdered snow, too beautiful and sacred to disturb.

The Master has never liked the quiet. His fingers absently drum along the wooden headboard of one of two cribs placed prominently in the center of the room, and although it is not quite the relentless _one-two-three-four_ of his youth, it is still too close to his liking. So he forces himself to clench his fist while exhaling sharply. An attempt at calm, even though it has never failed to elude him.

He goes to the window seat, where the stars glimmer distorted through the frosted glass. This had been where the Doctor curled up most days as he worked on preparing this room, her infectious enthusiasm burning bright as she gave directions and tried to help where she could. Yet on occasion, he would catch her gaze drifting about the nursery with the same kind of bewilderment he felt now. He thought that going through the rituals of expecting parents would make the whole endeavor seem more real, but if anything, the prospect seemed even more dream-like.

But they would have to grow accustomed to it at some point, surely? Three children wouldn’t be enough to resurrect a civilization; they would have to continue this cycle for… what, a thousand years? Ten thousand? Would they have the strength to endure?

They will, he tells himself. There is no alternative, not when it means the prospect of losing her. At least this way they are united, even if they are united in uncertainty. It still feels strange, after the pain of millennia apart, to find themselves on the same side, with the same purpose. One that managed to indulge her savior complex while feeding his revenge against the Time Lords that had wronged them. Such a delicate peace between their otherwise warring natures, he wonders how long it can possibly last.

 _Children will be good for them,_ echoes like a mantra in his head. _Children will bridge the divide. Children will keep the peace._

His attention drifts to the empty cots with their neatly folded blankets, so prepared in a way he can never be. He remembers what they will look like occupied, little limbs thrashing and squirming, impossibly tiny hands grasping at the bars. The fact that babies look the same throughout all of time feels absurd, when the rest of Creation changes so much. 

~~When _he_ ~~ ~~has changed so very much.~~

How much will these new ones resemble the ones he lost?

How much will they resemble _her_?

Just then, a faint voice from the adjoining room calls out his name.

When he emerges from the nursery, he finds the Doctor nestled among half a dozen crimson pillows, practically obscured by all the red fabric piled around her. She looks around blearily, disoriented by the shadows that weren’t there when she fell unconscious, but instantly relaxes when he comes into view. “Master,” she sighs in relief, reaching out a pale, wraith-like hand.

“Doctor,” he affectionately murmurs in reply. With one hand gripping hers, the other immediately goes to the once soaking towelette on her forehead, now bone dry. “You’re still burning up, love. How do you feel?”

“‘S fine,” she tries to reassure him, despite the fact he can feel her feverishly hot skin. “It’s much better now.”

 _It’s not_ , he wants to scream, but instead he wordlessly dips the white towel in a water basin perched on their bedside table. He watches her eyelids flutter the moment he presses it to her skin, sickly pale in the shafts of moonlight that cross her face. “Really,” she insists as she reaches up to cup his face, “I’ll be alright. It’s just like a regeneration drain.”

The Master nods. “Another regeneration drain,” he agrees, in the childish hope that saying it will make it true.

Still doing his best to mask his worry from her, he reaches over for a bottle of clear liquid and a teaspoon. “Here, drink some more of this. Should help with the fever.” _Should have helped hours ago,_ part of him whispers.

He holds the spoon up to her lips, followed by a glass of water to wash away the bitter taste. “There we are, love, well done. Do you think you can manage some food as well?”

She shakes her head, strands of blonde hair sticking to her skin. “Think I’ll just be sick again.”

“You need to eat something,” he insists, gesturing to a tray of uneaten food. “One of the nurses brought you dinner and you haven’t touched it.”

The Doctor grimaces at the prospect of eating but allows the Master to feed her spoonfuls of vegetable soup, while just barely managing to hold her head up. As she eats in silence, he can see the way her eyes dart listlessly around their bedroom, except when they occasionally gravitate in the direction of her TARDIS, parked at the far end of their quarters at her insistence. Even in the pale moonlight, he can see the way that loneliness dulls the luster of her eyes.

The Master frowns. He hates seeing her forlorn like this; it’s so unlike this new form of hers. At least Time Lord children would offer a distraction from the thought of her human pets. Soon, he tells himself, soon she would come to realize how much better things were this way.

“Just a bit more,” he says when she refuses to open her mouth after the tenth bite. “Energy for the baby, remember?”

His face falls when she turns away at the mention of the baby. “I don’t know if I can do it,” she whispers, the kind of admission that can only be made in the privacy of shadows. “What if I’m not strong enough? What if I regenerate and… gods, I can’t even imagine it… me, killing our own child….”

“Don’t say that, Theta,” he says as his arms wrap around her. “We still have about a month until you go into labor; you’ll be just fine by then.”

Her dark eyes stare vacantly at the arched doorway to the nursery, as if dreading the approach of some terrible monster. “You can’t know that,” she says. “I’ve only gotten worse.” 

“I do know how strong you are,” the Master replies simply, “and I know you’ve survived much worse than this.” He cups her face and turns it toward him again, so that she can see how sincere he is. “You’re the Doctor,” he reminds her. “It would take much more than a simple fever to take you down. I’ve learned that from experience.”

“In the meantime,” he continues, reaching for a small platter of bioengineered Earth fruits, “let me take care of you, my darling. Whatever you need, I’ll be here.”

The Doctor can’t help but smile at that. “Quite the role reversal, isn’t it?” she quips as she settles back into the cushions piled around her like a fortress. 

Much to her surprise, the Master suddenly looks wounded. His gaze falls to the ground. “It isn’t for me.”

Outside, a lone _turnkike_ crows in the night.

Her hands fumble in the dark for his. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright,” he says as he holds out a handful of grapes as a kind of peace offering. They fall back into a comfortable silence, him stroking her tangled hair, her leaning on his arm for support. If he closes his eyes, the Master can take himself back to a dozen moments like this at the Academy, whiling away hours in their tiny dorm room with stolen books and nonsensical debates and the precious company of each other. If he closes his eyes, he can almost pretend they never left.

“Do you remember,” he says after a while, “when I offered you half the universe?”

The Doctor nods. “What about it?”

“I was thinking that if you had said yes, maybe this is what it would have felt like. And I just need you to know that — if given the chance, no matter the pain or the cost — I would give _all_ of it to you.”

“Oh, Koschei,” she murmurs, taking his hand and cradling it to her chest, “you know I’ve never wanted the universe. Just help me watch over our children, and I’ll have everything I could ever want.”

“For as long as I’m alive,” he promises. He doesn’t dare to think how short that might actually be.

For now, he decides to take solace in the way her breathing seems to come easier, proof of the medicine’s efficacy. _She’ll be better in the morning,_ he thinks. _All better in the morning._

The Doctor’s pale fingers curl around his wrist. “Can you do something for me?” she asks as her eyelids grow heavy. “Could… could you make sure I don’t have any dreams tonight?”

“Of course, love.” After pulling the blankets around her curled up form, he tucks back a few loose strands of hair and touches her temple. Sleep pulls her under within seconds, and he marvels as the years seem to melt away, leaving nothing more remarkable than a tired child. 

The Master sighs; he wishes that dream wouldn’t trouble her so much. While it was true that an unborn Time Lord’s timestream was still in flux, allowing it to drift through time unhindered, in no way did that mean it was _reliable_. If anything, its tenuous grip on the present reality meant that it could misinterpret events, mix the past with the future, create impressionistic imaginings that had no basis in fact. Even the wisest Time Lords among their fallen race would find themselves hopelessly adrift in the Doctor and the Master’s timelines, locked in an endless dance of creation and destruction.

His thoughts turn again to their child, the culmination of them both, and wonders which side will win out.

A growing light beneath the Doctor’s skin jolts the Master from his thoughts. Gold strands consume the Doctor like fire, making her writhe in pain while he watches helplessly, before the light dies out as quickly as it came. If he hadn't seen it occur a dozen times before, he would have questioned if it even happened. Still, he can't help but fret over the fact that, surely, losing a significant amount of her regeneration energy to the Looms should decrease the intensity of her regeneration drains. But instead, they were becoming more and more frequent. It didn’t make any sense.

He barely has time to ponder that issue, however, before a hesitant knock comes at their door. 

When Yaz sees the Master’s face at the door, her face puckers up ike she’s just had raw lemon juice. “Oh, it’s you.”

“Who did you expect?” he answers icily. He looks down at the key in her hand. “What happened to the other two? Or perhaps you’re annoying enough for three humans that I’ve simply failed to notice.”

“They’re not coming.”

The Master arches an eyebrow but decides not to press further. “Well, you’re certainly brave to come by yourself. Thought you might come with a tinfoil hat or some other rubbish.”

“I did come with a phone,” Yaz says challengingly, pulling it out of her pocket like a weapon. “I’m on a phone call with Graham and Ryan right now, so if you try anything with my mind, they’ll know.”

“Oh, how _terrifying_ ,” the Master chortles. “In that case, I’d better let you get on your way at once.”

Yaz chooses to ignore the way he dramatically steps aside and ushers her in, but once she steps over the threshold and notices the Doctor, sick and weak in bed, she finds herself desperate for a distraction. _Just walk away_ , she urges herself, chin held high and shoulders squared back. _The TARDIS is in the other room, all you need to do is walk away…._

The question falls from her lips like the most natural thing in the world. “How is she?”

Momentarily taken aback, the Master looks her up and down, debating on whether or not she warrants an answer. “Not good,” he finally settles on. “She’ll be worse if you wake her,” he adds with a pointed look at the side door leading to the TARDIS. “Only just managed to put her to sleep.”

“How?” she asks in spite of herself.

“Psychic connection,” he says dismissively, not expecting her to understand. “One of the few ways to let her sleep through the night.” 

Yaz raises an eyebrow. “You just… enter her mind like that? And you don’t consider that invasive at all?”

“Typical humans,” he says with an eye roll. “Time Lords are psychic creatures; we thrive off telepathy. Your human minds are like white noise, absolutely nothing to link up to. A few sparks of genius every couple centuries, but nothing that comes close to sustaining the mind of a Time Lord.” He laughs darkly, his swirling brown eyes squeezing her lungs like a vice. “I imagine you lot haven’t the faintest idea how much you hurt her, just by nature of what you are.”

Yaz doesn’t know how to react to that piece of information, if he’s even telling the truth, but it conjures up images of walking through a world of static, unable to break through to anyone, and the thought makes her shudder. “And I guess getting rid of all the other Time Lords was supposed to make that better for her?” she asks coldly. 

“The ones who hurt her, yes. The whole of Time Lord society was built from her suffering, but now we can remake it in our image, with her at the center.”

Yaz crosses her arms. “With you _both_ at the center,” she remarks, unimpressed. “Guys like you never like playing second fiddle to anybody, at least not for long. Must still tear you to pieces then, that whole Timeless Child business. I remember you in the Matrix, how obsessed you were. She’s willing to put it all behind her, but I’ll bet you never will. She’ll outshine you forever.”

Even in the dark, Yaz can see his eye twitch and knows she’s struck a nerve, even though he does an admirable job of hiding it. “In some ways, perhaps,” he replies simply, looking down at her sleeping face in undisguised adoration, “but she still needs me. She may be like a god, in more ways than your human brain could ever know, and yet I have given her something that no other mortal being can.”

Yaz’s face wrinkles in disgust. “Oh, get off it. You didn’t _give_ her anything. You knocked her up so that she’d stay with you, so that you’d feel important, because you’re really nothing without her, are you? I can see it, you know, the way you practically cling to her when you’re together.” _I know it because that used to be me._

She can see the conflict in his eyes, between taking the bait and letting the Doctor rest undisturbed, and it gives her a grim satisfaction. Might as well make her last act on this planet be putting this arse in his place. “You don’t deserve her,” she goads him. “You know you don’t. She keeps trying to see the good in you, even when you know there’s nothing there. If she weren’t having your baby, I bet she would’ve turned you over to some intergalactic space police long ago. And then you’d finally get what you deserve.” 

“Oh?” the Master asks in a dangerously low voice. “And what is it you think I deserve, Yasmin Khan?”

“Death,” she says without the slightest hesitation. “Preferably a long and painful one.”

The Master hums thoughtfully. “And you suppose that should be universal?” he laughs as he approaches her, until he has her nearly backed into a wall. “You, Yasmin Khan, the great arbiter of justice throughout the galaxy?”

“Why shouldn’t it be?” Yaz challenges him, even as apprehension begins to seep into her voice. “It’s the least you deserve after slaughtering all those people.”

“Oh, you really are one of the Doctor’s poor humans, aren’t you?” he laughs, beams of moonlight and something darker glinting in his eyes. “So convinced that your notion of goodness is absolute. Oh, I’m sure many courts across time and space would agree with you. Others would call your death sentence the height of barbarity and do their best to ‘rehabilitate’ me instead. Still others would argue that the destruction of an oppressive, tyrannical race like the Time Lords deserves praise and glory. Or that the _preservation_ of a species on the brink of extinction surmounts everything else.” The Master smirks at that last possibility. “In that case, I’d walk out of my trial with a bottle of fertility medicine and a mandate to fuck the Doctor senseless. Would that satisfy your need for justice, Yaz?”

Yaz can feel the blood rising to her cheeks, and she hates herself for thinking that it was a good idea to rile up a bully who knew how to hit her where it hurt the most. All she’s done is make a fool of herself, like the desperate ex who can’t take a hint. After pulling out her phone to end the call with Graham and Ryan, she makes a beeline for the TARDIS.

“Of course some peoples,” the Master continues in a more serious tone, “would say that the happiness of the Doctor is more valuable than anything in the universe.”

That stops Yaz in her tracks. “Then that’s your sentence,” she says without looking back, “if you won’t accept any other. Make sure she’s the happiest person in the universe. Even if that means standing next to her every day and knowing she’ll never need you in the same way you need her. Even if that means letting her go one day, when she’s tired of you and everything you have to give, because you’ll never really be enough. Not when she has eternity.”

The Master scoffs, but Yaz can tell it’s just a false bravado. “You say that like you know her so well.”

“Maybe I don’t know her as well as you do, but I’ve seen enough to know that running in and out of people’s lives is what the Doctor does best. One day, she’ll walk away from you just like I’m walking away from her, and then you’ll understand—” She turns her head, and the moonlight reflects off her eyes like slivers of ice— “that loving the Doctor is its own kind of suffering.” 

Even though she feels so distant from her body at the moment, Yaz feels vaguely proud of how she manages to hold her head high as she turns the key, pushes open the TARDIS door, and lets it swing shut behind her with a soft click. Her stoic face starts to crumble, however, as she stomps toward the console and throws her arms wide. “Alright!” she shouts at the ceiling, racing to get the words out before she has time to regret them. “I’m ready for Protocol 13 or whatever! I don’t know how this is meant to work, but the Doctor wants me gone, so just—” Her voice breaks and she _hates_ it, hates it with a fury that _burns—_ “just… take me home,” she finishes in a whisper.

The TARDIS is quiet. No bells or lights or whistles. Yaz wonders if she should try again.

Then she hears an all-too familiar voice behind her.

“Emergency Protocol 13 activated.”

Yaz whips around and there’s _her_ Doctor standing in front of her, dressed in that ridiculous charity shop outfit Yaz has missed so much, smiling a heartbroken little smile as if _she’s_ the one who’s meant to be hurting in this situation. Angry tears sting in Yaz’s eyes. 

“If you’re receiving this message,” the hologram begins, because that’s what she is, Yaz realizes, “then I’ve put you in a situation where I can’t bring you home safely. The TARDIS already has the coordinates for 21st century Sheffield; she’ll take you back before returning to her original location to come get me. That is,” she adds, awkwardly rubbing the back of her neck, “if I’m still alive by that point.”

Yaz watches like an entranced child, scared to so much as breathe in case the spell breaks and the Doctor disappears forever.

“I’m guessing I haven’t been able to give you lot a proper goodbye,” the hologram continues, “so I want to tell you how much you mean to me. When we first met, I told you that I lost my family a long time ago—”

“Oh no,” Yaz interrupts, taking a step backwards. “You don’t get to do this to me. You don’t get to stand there without any idea what’s going on and give me some pre-recorded _bullcrap_ about how much you care!”

“—and now I couldn’t imagine traveling the universe without my fam. I’m so sorry I can’t be with you now—”

Yaz takes a wrench laying on the console and hurls it at the Doctor, who momentarily dissolves into static as the wrench passes through. “You _left_ us!” she shouts at the top of her lungs. “You left us for him! How dare you say sorry, how dare you pretend like… like….”

Yaz blinks away the wetness in her eyes, and although she hates herself for it, one look at the Doctor’s face is enough to take the wind out of her sails. “Like everything hasn't fallen apart,” she finishes quietly. Deflated. 

“—and I’ll do everything I can to get back to you,” promises the hologram, still smiling obliviously, “so just hang in there for me, okay? Even if it takes me lifetimes, I’ll never stop trying to reach you again. That’s how much you all mean to me.”

“Then why did you send us away?” Yaz asks brokenly as she sinks to the ground and hugs her knees to her chest.

The hologram pauses, leaving nothing but the pitter-patter of tears on metal grating.

“Because sometimes I put the people I love in danger,” says the Doctor, so soft and scared and real. “And because a universe without Yaz scarcely bears thinking about.” 

Yaz’s head jerks up just in time to watch the hologram dissolve into light, leaving her alone in the console room once more.

She stands on shaky legs, goes over to one of the monitors, and sure enough, the address to her apartment is flashing in bright blue letters. She places her hand on the lever directly under it, the one she’s seen the Doctor pull a million times, and takes a deep, shaky breath. With one pull, she’ll be back at Sheffield like nothing ever happened. When she closes her eyes, it all comes back to her — the neverending piles of paperwork that senior officers always passed on to her, the shouting matches with Sonya for using up her favorite conditioner, the lonely weekends curled up on the couch with a worn quilt around her shoulders and some Netflix show playing in the background. Her small little world with its small little people and their small little problems; the universe’s equivalent of parking tickets. 

Her hand grips the lever tighter. _But that’s where you belong,_ a tired voice berates her. _That’s where you’ve always belonged. Running away won’t solve your problems, don’t you remember? Time to get back to reality._

And yet, her grip falters. She can’t fathom the thought of staying here, but she also can’t imagine going home. Is there really any point in trading one kind of misery for another?

Then her thoughts turn to the Doctor - _always the Doctor_ \- who will live out a decidedly un-miserable life with her husband and their children, undisturbed by a trio of meddling humans. _Unless she doesn’t,_ a new, traitorous voice inside her head whispers. _If you leave now, you’ll never know if she dies._

 _She’s not going to die_ , Yaz argues with herself. _Immortal alien healer, remember?_

_A bit too close to death at the moment, isn’t she?_

Yaz chews her bottom lip. 

_You_ know _something’s not right around here. You’re still a police officer, aren’t you? So investigate!_

“But she doesn’t want us here anymore….”

_Stop thinking about the Doctor for one second, and instead do this for the hundreds of Shobogans whose lives could be at stake if that genocidal maniac is up to something. Or do you think that handing over a shiny metal Frisbee to a ragtag bunch of revolutionaries is enough?_

“But I can’t… this is what the Doctor’s meant to do, not us.”

_Well, who better to substitute than her bravest companion?_

"I only feel brave when I'm around her," Yaz admits to the empty console room. "I don't know how we'll manage on our own."

 _"I’ll do everything I can to get back to you,"_ the Doctor's promise echoes. " _So just hang in there for me, okay?"_

Yaz’s hand slips from the lever. She pulls out her phone and, unsurprisingly, finds over twenty missed calls and texts from Ryan and Graham in the past five minutes. She opens Ryan’s most recent voicemail and hits the callback button.

“God, Yaz, why’d you hang up on us like that? Are you okay?”

Yaz walks toward the TARDIS doors, bidding goodbye to its cozy golden glow. “I’m fine. Sorry about that.”

“Still remember everything then?”

“Yup. Listen, you haven’t found Rassilon yet, have you?”

“No, still looking. Why?”

Yaz takes a deep breath, then takes the plunge.

“Because I’m coming with.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi y'all! Sorry about the late update, currently dealing with some delicate family matters (yay, so fun!) I'm going to take a few days off writing in order to sort stuff out, so don't expect an update this Sunday. Hopefully I can crank out a new chapter - which was supposed to be part of this week's chapter, but apparently ya girl does not know how to pace - in two weeks' time. 
> 
> As always, thank you for reads, kudos, and comments; they truly make my day, especially in times like this where I feel like I'm falling apart. See you all in 2021!


	15. Serpent in the Garden

“She’s gotten worse.”

Yaz’s fingers curl around the chipped clay mug, orange dust coating her fingertips. She stares into its murky depths and tries counting to ten, breathing in and out, anything to distract herself from the huddled group of Shobogans staring holes into her bowed head. There are more of them this time around, nearly twenty. Cynically, she wonders if they’ve used her support as a means of recruiting. 

“I went to visit her again today,” she continues. “None of the medicine’s working; her temperature’s even higher than yesterday. It looked like she was sleeping a little better, but that’s about it.”

Yaz somehow stomachs a quick glance around the bombed-out hovel; most of the faces there are unfamiliar to her, and the ones that are aren’t exactly friendly. She notices Galatea inspecting her nails, painfully indifferent to the Doctor’s condition, and it makes Yaz’s blood boil.

“And the Master?” Galatea asks with a haughtily raised eyebrow.

“Still there,” Yaz answers evenly. “I don’t think he’s left her once in three days. Tries to get her to eat sometimes, when she’s awake, but I don’t think it’s working. She’s so thin now; it’s like looking at a skeleton.”

“So now’s our chance,” says Galatea to the rest of the Shobogans. “You heard Yaz; he’s not going to leave her side, not in her sorry state. Time to sneak down to the basement of the Citadel, destroy the Looms, problem solved. If we work fast, we can wipe out the future of the Time Lords by this time tomorrow, then celebrate with some Otherstide wine at the end of the week.”

The others murmur in agreement, but Von quickly picks up on their lack of enthusiasm. “I know it feels dirty, taking advantage of their weakness like this,” he admits softly, “but we have to take whatever opportunity comes our way. If we wait, we’re only giving them the time to fill those Looms with children who will never come to be. Really, if you think about it, it’s kinder this way.”

Yaz doesn’t know who he’s trying to convince more, the rebels or himself, but his words seem to have an effect, as Shobogans start breaking off into smaller groups to talk strategy. When it’s clear that no one else is paying Yaz any mind, Von approaches with the suns dial in his calloused hands. 

“If you ever get the chance,” he says lowly, “try to put this back where you found it. If we’re lucky, they’ll never know it was gone. I wouldn’t want them to trace this whole thing back to you.”

Yaz’s fingers are numb as she slips the dial back into the breast pocket of her jacket. She hardly registers the weight against her chest - perhaps because it never really left. “Right. Of course.”

“I know how tough this decision was,” says Von, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder, “and you should know that we’re all very grateful to you.” He pauses for a moment, unsure of how to continue. “You know, we had to comb through hours of memories to learn exactly where the Looms are and how they work, so I’ve seen a lot of what was in there. I don’t know how much you saw for yourself, but I just wanted to remind you that everything you saw, that’s just the world through their eyes. That version of them isn’t the whole story. That version of _Gallifrey_ isn’t the whole story.”

“And you’re saying yours is?”

Von purses his lips into a thin line. “You’ve seen with your own eyes how powerful they are. Maybe if the scales were less unbalanced we could afford to hear their side of things before we act. But, as you say on Earth,” he adds with a shrug before walking away, “desperate times call for desperate measures.” 

He isn’t wrong, Yaz thinks. When she looks around the room at the scruffy band of Shobogans with their crude maps of the Citadel and their even cruder plans, all she can see is desperation. These are people who know that success is the only option. If the Doctor or the Master were to find them… she relives the memory of Von crumpling like a puppet with its strings cut, of the Doctor cornering her at the edge of the chasm, and feels herself start to hyperventilate. 

Apparently she’s not doing a good job of hiding her imminent breakdown as Reneth weaves through the other rebels and takes Yaz’s arm. “You need some fresh air,” she says bluntly, guiding her out of the dilapidated hut and into the deserted street. Then, arms crossed and standing at a distance, she watches Yaz with an unnerving intensity, as if mentally dissecting Yaz piece by piece.

“Thank you,” Yaz says once she’s able to breathe normally. “Don’t know what happened to me in there.”

“You’re stressed,” Reneth notes with her trademark aloofness, before giving way to something softer - curiosity. “And you’re worried about the Doctor. Why is that?”

“What do you mean? You’ve seen how sick she is.”

“No, that’s not what I meant.” Reneth awkwardly tucks a lock of jet-black hair behind her ear, where she also wears a Flower of Remembrance in a silver hair clip. “You still care about her, even after what Von said she was going to do to you. Why?”

Yaz’s eyes scan the red gravel around her boots, as if searching for the proper words amid dirt and ashes. “Because something’s not right,” she settles on. “She’s in danger, and I have to figure out how.”

When Yaz lifts her head, there’s a previously unseen trembling in Reneth’s coal-black eyes. “How can you be here with us, having heard everything we’ve been through, and still want to protect her?”

“The two aren’t mutually exclusive,” Yaz insists. “I don’t agree with her, but people will care if she dies! I hate that it’s true, but even with everything she’s done, she’s still the most wonderful thing that’s _ever_ happened to me! And if she dies, I’m… I’m not sure I’ll know how to live with that.”

The desperation in Yaz’s voice sends Reneth reeling backwards, and a brief yet troubled look passes over her face. She fidgets with her flower clip, weighing her next words carefully.

“That’s not going to happen, you know,” she whispers in an attempt at kindness, slightly marred by her inability to look Yaz in the eye. “You don’t need to worry about her.”

“How can you say that?” Yaz demands. “You can’t possibly know that for sure!”

Reneth places a gentle hand on Yaz’s shoulder. “Just… trust me on this, okay? I'm one of her nurses; I'll make sure of it.”

She pulls back her hand, leaving tiny yellow pollen grains on Yaz’s jacket. The moment Yaz locks onto them, her eyes go wide as a sudden realization flashes across her mind like lightning. “That man,” she whispers, her voice shaking with dread and her mind failing to understand the reason, “that man at the riverbed of flowers. You’ve met him, too.”

“Wh-what do you mean? Yaz, are you sure you’re alright?”

“You said you go there all the time to visit your family's graves, you have to have seen him there, you have to have….” Yaz’s voice trails off, she blinks, and the thought is gone.

“I-I swear I have no idea what you're talking about. You should _really_ go back to the Citadel and get some rest,” says Reneth, visibly shaken, before hurrying back inside. 

Yaz stands alone in the middle of the road and takes a deep breath, trying to sort out what just transpired between them. Just as her brain begins to sift through the fragments, however, a notification ring rips her from her thoughts.

Yaz pulls out her phone and goes through the motions of checking her messages, even though she already knows what it says. There was only one person on the planet who would text her right now, and only one message worth sending.

_Found him._

* * *

“You found a _tree_.”

Ryan frowns at the GPS tracker on his phone. “This is where he’s supposed to be, I swear. Look for yourself; every life reading the drone’s picked up leads back here.”

That much Yaz can believe, as she surveys the otherwise desolate wasteland of craggy cliffs and orange dunes. There’s no way this lonely tree should be able to survive out here, much less a Time Lord.

“Do you reckon Time Lords can shapeshift?” Graham tilts back his head and squints at the branches bursting with tiny silver leaves, like dragonfly wings in the sunlight. “Maybe he’s turned himself into a squirrel.”

“Or maybe it’s the tree that’s doing the shapeshifting,” counters Yaz. She starts pacing around the tree, running her hands along the trunk in search of some kind of hidden doorknob; when she gets about halfway around, she stops in her tracks. “Come look at this,” she says, tracing her finger down a large crack in the bark. “This is way too straight to be natural. It’s got to be a door to something.”

Ryan crosses his arms. “Okay, so how do we open it?”

No sooner do the words leave his mouth than the tree trunk splits open with a mighty shudder, swinging outwards to reveal a sterile, white, decidedly un-treelike interior. The humans’ eyes widen in recognition.

“This is a TARDIS,” Yaz breathes.

“Well, at least we know we’ve got the right place,” Graham chuckles nervously as he pokes his head in further. “Do you reckon we should go in?”

“It let us in,” Ryan points out. “That’s a good sign, isn’t it?”

A light desert wind kicks up dust around their ankles. “Why are we so confident that this Time Lord won’t straight-up murder us, again?” Yaz inquires casually.

“We’re not," says Grahm. "But we don’t have another choice.”

“Alright then,” she says, taking a deep breath to fortify herself. “Then let’s do this.”

It’s a tighter fit than the Doctor’s police box, but the trio slips inside the TARDIS’ console room without any trouble. It’s an exact replica of the TARDIS they hijacked with the Doctor and the Cyberwar survivors all those months ago - must be the default setting, Yaz realizes. Despite that knowledge, she can’t help but compare the Doctor’s TARDIS, with its warm golden pillars and the familiar scent of vanilla and engine oil wafting through the air, with what feels like the equivalent of a doctor’s waiting room. Cold, sterile, uninviting.

“Perhaps that’s because you haven’t been invited,” says an imperious voice from behind them.

A strangled cry escapes Ryan’s mouth. Graham startles and nearly topples over. But Yaz does nothing, except go very, very still. 

She knows that voice. 

When Yaz, a mortal woman from a backwater planet thousands of light-years away, whips around to face Rassilon, Founder of Gallifrey and President of the Time Lords, the most ridiculous thought floats through her head.

_The Doctor was right about the hats._

This time, there was no mistaking him for a Shobogan farmhand, not with those snow-white robes embroidered with Gallifreyan runes, the same runes that adorned his headpiece. He clasps his hands in front of him and smiles at them kindly, but his deep brown eyes stare right through them, and Yaz shudders at the inarticulable feeling that he has just seen through everything they ever were and ever will be in the span of a single breath. 

And found nothing of import.

“Yasmin Khan,” says Rassilon, and when he speaks there is a smooth, hypnotic richness that reverberates off every corner of her mind. Like the purr of a lion that renders its prey enamored until the first slash of claws. “How delightful it is to meet with you once more. And with friends, no less.”

“Hang on,” says Ryan, “you two have met before?”

“Yes, a couple times, but it didn’t know it was him,” Yaz hisses. “He didn’t look like this, he looked like…” _Like someone I could talk to. Someone I could trust._

Rassilon watches their bickering with the faint amusement of an adult overlooking a pair of children. “It was a necessary deception,” he cuts in smoothly. “I was ever so intrigued to learn what has become of Gallifrey in my exile, and one could hardly go out like this without attracting unwanted attention.”

“So you’re really Rassilon?” asks Graham. “‘Cause if so, you should probably update that statue they’ve got of you in the Citadel.”

Rassilon smirks, youthful brown skin wrinkling at the corners of his eyes. “I should like that _very_ much. I’ve had several faces since that feeble old man, but I am particularly partial to this one. Such a pleasure to revisit a favorite face.”

Rassilon takes a step forward, and the three humans back away out of instinct. “And such interesting faces the Doctor has chosen for her companions,” he continues, cocking his head to one side. “Certainly unexpected, from what I recall of her last choice. But it seems she has still retained some of her old… preferences,” he adds with a piercing look in Yaz’s direction.

Being the object of Rassilon’s scrutiny makes Yaz feel like an insect with its wings pinned, but she tries to inject her voice with as much false bravery as possible. “We need your help,” she blurts out. “We… we don’t trust the Doctor and the Master to rule Gallifrey together. We need you to come back and put the Master on trial for killing everyone on Gallifrey.”

“That is something you can do, right?” Graham interjects. “As a Time Lord and all that?”

“Of course,” Rassilon answers breezily, as he starts slowly circling the console. “His crimes against Gallifrey are incalculable, and he deserves the highest degree of punishment. The question, then,” he breathes, eyes alight with fire and hunger, “is why you’ve come all this way to find me, rather than turn to your precious Doctor?”

“Because she won’t do it,” says Graham. “We’ve tried talking to her, but she doesn’t want to punish him. She… well, she’s pregnant, you see, that’s how this mess got started, and now they want to bring back the Time Lords. Together.”

When Rassilon laughs, there’s a hard edge to the sound, like a wall of ice beneath dark waters. “As if the Time Lords are something to be replaced by strands of DNA and clumps of flesh. The Time Lords had a shared history, a shared nobility, a shared duty that those two have decried for millennia. Whatever creatures they concoct together, they will certainly not be Time Lords.”

“How can we stop them?” asks Yaz, taking a bold step forward. “Because the Doctor won’t listen to us. It’s… it’s like we don’t even know who she is anymore. Earlier this week, she even tried to attack us and wipe our memories. She’s not in her right mind.”

“That, Yasmin Khan, is because she isn’t.” Rassilon leans against the console edge and folds his arms, surveying the humans thoughtfully. “Tell me, what do you know of the covenant the Doctor and the Master share?”

The trio exchange hesitant looks before Ryan takes a stab. “Well, they’re married, aren’t they? Been married a long time, yeah? And, er, they’ve got this sundial thing, that acts like a fancy marriage certificate.” 

“Yes, but it’s much more than that,” Rassilon explains patiently. “A suns dial contains the entwined timelines of two married Time Lords, uniting their souls in a manner that is far more profound than hollow vows.”

Graham furrows his brow quizically. “So what does that mean, exactly?”

“It means they’re bound together,” says Yaz, eyes wide in shock. “That’s why she’s covering for him. She doesn’t have a choice, like… like she’s being forced to.”

“Not exactly,” Rassilon interjects. “The marriage bond does not come with any sort of compulsion; for better or worse, the Doctor’s will is entirely her own. However, by immortalizing the memories of a bygone era, those old feelings and desires are amplified as well. Enough to outshine the more unsavory aspects of the other, especially when strengthened by… a physical closeness,” he says with distaste.

The humans nod along, uncertainty written on their faces. “He’s around her all the time,” Ryan realizes with growing anxiety. “Ever since they found out she was going to have a kid.”

“Not only that, but in conceiving a child via natural means, the Master has ensured there is a deep physical bond between them. One that cannot be broken and also leaves the Doctor at her most vulnerable.”

Panic rises in Yaz’s chest, making it difficult to breathe. “What does he want with her?”

Rassilon arches an eyebrow and resumes pacing. “That I cannot say for certain, only conjecture. But based upon the countless centuries I have had the displeasure of knowing him, the Master only covets two things: dominion over the universe, and dominion over death.”

“Immortality,” says Graham, wringing his hands. “Just like the Doc. That’s it, isn’t it? He wants her to give him his power, like she did with that Shobogan baby. Only he wants her to make him immortal.”

“Hang on, are we sure about this?” Ryan asks. “I mean, it’s not like we have solid proof that that’s what he’s planning. He does also love her, doesn’t he?”

The corners of Rassilon’s mouth twitch, as if inwardly laughing at some private joke. “You are well-acquainted with the Doctor, correct? Then tell me, would you butcher her people, raze her home, leave nothing but cinders, and call it love?”

“He’s right,” Yaz says fiercely. “The Master’s a monster; he doesn’t know what love is. He’s just manipulating the Doctor, taking advantage of the fact that they think they’re the only Time Lords left.” There’s a barely restrained fury in her voice, but deeper down, a sense of relief. With one revelation, the past five months of confusion and hurt finally made perfect sense. This wasn’t their Doctor, not truly, and now was their one and only chance to get her back.

Yaz glances sideways at Graham, who seemed to be thinking along similar lines. “So what do we do? Is there some way to destroy that dial? Because if we did, she would be able to see the Master for who he is now, right?”

“There is a way,” says Rassilon, “although even if we were to find it, there is a protection to keep it from falling into the hands of anyone who would wish the couple harm. Unlocking it, therefore, would require a mind filled with naught but love for one or both parties.”

“Okay then,” says Graham, “so how do we find—”

“I have it!” Yaz announces in a surge of boldness. “And… I’ve, er, unlocked it,” she admits, blushing furiously.

Graham and Ryan gawk at Yaz as she pulls the dial from her jacket pocket. “Where the hell did you get that?” asks Ryan. “And what were you doing with it?”

“Nothing important,” Yaz says quickly. She steps forward and offers it up to Rassilon, leaving her feeling light and free the moment the cold metal disc leaves her fingers. After days of having it weigh upon her conscience, unsure of what to do with its knowledge, now she feels it’s in the right hands. 

An emotion unknown to Yaz glitters like dark stars in Rassilon’s eyes as he takes the dial from her, turning it over in his hands as though he can’t believe just the still weight of it in his palm. “The Doctor’s humans are certainly full of surprises,” he muses while tracing the Gallifreyan letters.

“We’re her _friends_ ,” Ryan corrects tersely, “not her humans.”

Graham apprehensively watches Rassilon toy with the dial. “What are you going to do with that now? Just give them a Time Lord divorce or something?”

“It’s not quite as easy as all that,” Rassilon says lightly. “It would have to be done in person, in the Citadel where the Time Lord Matrix resides. And as it just so happens, a Time Lord trial requires the same.”

Ryan, still apprehensive, folds his arms across his chest. “But I’m guessing there’s a problem with that.” 

Rassilon clenches his jaw for a brief moment before returning to his cool composure. “As a result of my exile, I am physically incapable of entering the Citadel; only the current Lord President can drop the Citadel’s defenses.”

“But you have a TARDIS,” Ryan points out. “Can’t you fly it into the city?”

“If I could, then yes. However, it would seem that I have also been bio-locked out of every TARDIS in existence. Can’t even keep the doors closed, as you’ve seen for yourselves.”

“Then if you can’t fly a TARDIS, how did you wind up all the way out here?” asks Yaz.

“You’ll find that when living on the only planet in a time-locked bubble universe, there are precious few places to send exiles. As for the TARDIS, TARDISes which are left dormant for too long naturally return to Gallifrey, if they possess the energy for it. A rare occurrence, given that a TARDIS is one of the most coveted vessels in the universe. But it appears that _someone_ has been rather careless,” he adds with a grin that’s all teeth and terror. “Just as careless as ever.”

Graham lets out a tense sigh and runs his hands through his hair. “Alright, so we’re going to need the Doctor for this. Only problem is that she’s sick, and getting worse by the hour.”

Rassilon taps his chin thoughtfully. “I may have a solution for that,” he says before taking off down a hidden corridor with the suns dial in tow and white robes billowing in his wake.

The moment he rounds the corner, leaving the three humans alone, Yaz’s tense shoulders instantly relax. “I can’t believe this plan worked. I can’t believe he’s actually helping us.”

Meanwhile, Ryan and Graham look considerably less at ease. “Are you sure that was the right move, giving him the suns dial?” Graham whispers. “That’s part of the Doctor’s life he’s holding. How do you know we can trust him?”

“Look, he’s not the nicest person I’ve ever met, but it’s like you said, Graham,” she answers with a level of calm that surprises even herself. “We don’t have an alternative.”

“He’s a bastard,” Ryan declares. “I know one when I see one. He’s definitely hiding something from us.”

Yaz lifts her chin and responds coldly, “He’s still being more honest with us than the Doctor ever was.”

Not even the sound of footsteps herald Rassilon’s return, with a tiny vial of pure white liquid. “Give this to her,” he says, extending it to Graham. “Its effects are temporary, but there is little else I can do from a distance. It will heal her long enough to do what must be done.”

Graham eyes the vial skeptically. “How are you so sure it will work? We haven’t even told you what’s wrong with her.”

“Oh, I have an intuition,” he says, and the humans can almost _hear_ the laughter in each drawn-out syllable.

Graham hesitantly reaches for the vial when Ryan cuts in. “Why are you helping us?” he demands. “The Doctor’s the one who threw you out, shouldn’t that make you hate her?”

Rassilon straightens himself imperiously, managing to look down on Ryan despite their equal stature. “Even hatred can be set aside when the fate of one’s people is at stake. And if the Master does intend to steal her immortality, likely killing her in the process, then the stakes are very high indeed. I would much rather go about the task of rebuilding Gallifrey with the Doctor, who at least can see glimpses of reason, than the Master, who lamentably cannot.”

“That’s enough for me,” says Yaz, taking the vial without a second thought. “Whatever it takes to save the Doctor and give the Master hell. What about you two?” she says to Graham and Ryan.

Graham runs his hands through his hair, in an effort to hide the way they tremble. “Well, it’s not like we have a Plan B. Although there’s still the issue of how this is going to work at all. Sure, we can try talking to her, but if she decides to look inside our minds, then it’s all over, innit?”

“I can teach you how to build a rudimentary mental shield,” Rassilon assures him. “Not enough to block her out completely should she attempt to overpower you. But it would buy you enough time to redirect your thoughts if need be.”

“That sounds… amazing, actually,” says Yaz, eyes alight with curiosity. The Doctor had always kept the particulars of her race under wraps, but now, against all odds, they had found a Time Lord who was willing to explain things like TARDISes and telepathy. One who didn’t see them quite as equals, admittedly, but was still willing to enlist their help. Yaz would be lying if she said she wasn’t at least a bit starstruck.

Ryan, on the other hand, immediately backs away. “Nah, mate, you’re not messing around inside my head.”

“Well then, perhaps you’d prefer a more traditional form of defense.” Rassilon reaches into his robes and pulls out a small bronze dagger, gold Gallifreyan letters swirling around the hilt. “A blade specifically designed to injure Time Lords by stalling our natural healing abilities. You’d never manage to do meaningful damage to either of them, but it may prove useful in the event that the Doctor turns on her _friends_ once more.”

Ryan narrows his eyes but takes the dagger. “Alright,” he says in a low voice, “but you better watch yourself, because you don’t know which Time Lord I’m gonna point this at.”

Rassilon’s laughter reverberates off the console walls. “I’d nearly forgotten how lively humans could be. Yes, I think this arrangement will prove illuminating for all of us.”

“Okay,” says Graham, stepping gingerly between his grandson and one of the most feared Time Lords in Gallifreyan history, “before we start throwing knives about the place, let’s focus on this plan to split up the Doctor and the Master so that we can put him on trial. Specifically, how on Earth we’re ever going to convince the Doctor to let down the shields and let Rassilon in without her knowing.”

“Oh, you needn’t worry about that. I have something much more straightforward in mind for you three clever humans.” Rassilon looks around at the trio of mortals, standing before him like lost little lambs, and drinks in the sight like darkest wine.

“Simply deliver the Doctor to me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yes, this Rassilon looks the same as the Time Lord who Tecteun regenerates into during TTC. Make of that what you will...
> 
> We're finally in the home stretch! Hope this chapter wasn't too exposition-y, but it's all necessary set up, I promise. These last few chapters are the ones I've been excited to write from the very beginning, and I hope you'll enjoy them too! See y'all next week 😁


End file.
